Specialists discuss state of teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language

by Dr. Orest Popovych

NEW YORK - The state of instruction of Ukrainian as a foreign language was discussed by scholars from Moscow and Lviv, from their different perspectives, at the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York on November 2.

First to speak was Dr. Oksana Ostapchuk, a philologist and linguist, who is a research fellow at the Center for Ukrainian Studies at the Institute of Slavonic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. She is currently in the United States as a fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute.

For the last five years Dr. Ostapchuk has been teaching Ukrainian language and history at the Lomonosov Moscow State University and at the Academy of Slavonic Culture in Moscow. Support for such studies from the Russian Ministry of Education has been modest, severely limitings enrollment. For example, at Moscow State University, each of the foreign Slavic programs, including Ukrainian, admits only eight students at a time, who must complete their five-year course of study towards a diploma before a new batch of eight students is admitted.

However, there are other institutions of higher learning in Moscow that teach Ukrainian as a foreign language, including the Institute of Linguistics and a school for diplomats. The students taking Ukrainian in Moscow are mostly ethnic Russians who wish to learn the language in preparation for traveling to Ukraine on business or pleasure. It is interesting that modern Ukrainian literature is popular among Russian students, who read it in translation. If more Russians were to learn the Ukrainian language, literature and history, it might result in better Ukrainian-Russian relations in general, concluded Dr. Ostapchuk.

Another topic developed by Dr. Ostapchuk at some length was the size and character of the Ukrainian diaspora in Russia. According to official statistics, the Ukrainian population in Russia is about 4.5 million; however, unofficial estimates run as high as 10 million. According to Dr. Ostapchuk, the difference arises from self-identification, as many Ukrainians in Russia simply do not admit to their ethnicity and do not insist on their rights as adamantly as do other minorities or the Russians living in Ukraine. In all of Russia there are only 20 schools in which classes are conducted entirely in Ukrainian. Nevertheless, there has been a gradual increase in the teaching of Ukrainian in Russian schools, said Dr. Ostapchuk.

In the city of Moscow the focus of organized Ukrainian life is the Ukrainian Cultural Center, located in a beautiful building in a fashionable area. The center houses a library, a bookstore and a film and video club. Two Ukrainian-language newspapers are published in Moscow, and they are available in the center's library.

The second speaker was Dr. Oleksandra Palka of Lviv, who is presently an IREX fellow in the department of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Virginia. She shared with the audience the challenges involved in teaching Ukrainian to foreigners in Lviv.

Although all the major institutions of higher learning have had preparatory language departments for foreigners since Soviet times, these were designed to teach the Russian language and are ill-prepared to teach Ukrainian.

Dr. Palka, who is a scholar at the Institute of Pedagogy and Educational Psychology of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine, has been developing a methodology for teaching Ukrainian to foreigners. To that end, in 1997 she published a book titled "Ukrainian as a Foreign Language," in which she tailors the instructions specifically for each major discipline, e.g., literature, economics, etc. We do everything possible to provide foreigners not only with the knowledge of the Ukrainian language, but also of our culture, concluded Dr. Palka.

The roundtable was organized and chaired by Dr. Anna Procyk, a vice-president of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 29, 2002, No. 52, Vol. LXX

| Home Page |