During the 2022–2023 academic year, Myroslava Hnatiuk, Associate Professor at the Department of Ukrainian Language, Lviv Polytechnic National University, completed her internship on the topic «Peculiarities of educational and methodological work of teaching staff in the Association of Ukrainian Teachers in Great Britain». The place of internship was the Association of Ukrainian Teachers in Great Britain (within the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain) on the basis of the St Mary’s Ukrainian School in London, Great Britain.
The scientific supervisor of the international internship was Inna Hryhorovych, Director of the St Mary’s Ukrainian School, NPQSL, who consistently cooperates with our educational institution. She represented the methodological principles of the pedagogical experience of the teaching staff of the Association of Ukrainian Teachers in Great Britain, shared the innovations of the educational and scientific work of her institution in the conditions of the war in Ukraine, and helped integrate into the English-speaking teaching environment.
During the internship, British colleagues created comfortable conditions for mastering materials related to conducting public lectures, training courses, and the practice of reviewing academic and educational publications. The opportunity to study the book collection of the Taras Shevchenko Library and Archive in London was especially valuable.
The trainee also took part in two scientific and methodological round tables on the topics: «Peculiarities of teaching the mother tongue in the conditions of English-Ukrainian bilingualism» and «Modern challenges in teaching the Ukrainian language to teenagers who are forced emigrants». The main emphasis of the meetings was focused on the need to create different educational programs and develop a special method of presenting material for emigrant students and those Ukrainian school and high school students who are forced to settle in Britain during the current war in Ukraine.
Here, under the condition of being in a bilingual environment, the so-called code-switching occurres (the speaker can consciously switch from Ukrainian to English, and vice versa). Unfortunately, the problem of English-Ukrainian crosstalk has also been observed, which uncontrollably covers the speech of a significant number of people. Therefore, as Mz. Hryhorovych emphasized, the primary task of British educators is «to teach to love everything Ukrainian in the conditions of emigration, to popularize speaking Ukrainian, to study Ukrainian history, the material and spiritual culture of Ukrainians, and to be creative in teaching, so as not to let any young person, who is just beginning to form a pro-Ukrainian worldview, be indifferent».
Myroslava Hnatiuk, Associate Professor at the Department of Ukrainian Language, expresses her sincere gratitude to the management of Association of Ukrainian Teachers in Great Britain and Lviv Polytechnic for the opportunity of a full-time internship, which serves as an important element of gaining experience and sharing scientific and methodological skills in teaching the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian speaking in particular, and will help improve the professional development of the intern, as well as contributes to the development of academic mobility and the deepening of Ukrainian-British scientific and educational perspectives.
