With each passing year, the competencies and areas of interest of the international centers of Lviv Polytechnic are expanding. Thus, one of the first, the Leonardo da Vinci Center for Italian-Ukrainian Cooperation began to conduct free Italian language courses for all Polytechnicians.
Dozens of students, teachers and employees of Lviv Polytechnic took a basic Italian course under the guidance of Orest Vasylko – Head of the Leonardo da Vinci Center for Italian-Ukrainian Cooperation. Everyone had positive emotions from the classes. The students of the course noted the improvement of their level of Italian. Several graduates shared their stories with us.
Viktoriia Rudyk, student of the Institute of Economics and Management:
«I learned about Italian language courses on the Internet – my friend, with whom we study, saw a post on Instagram and it motivated us to join and attend the course together. As I already had a basic level, it was much easier for me. But nevertheless, as any undertaking, it required considerable self-motivation and self-control. In general, the impression is positive – the team of students and teachers study together, the program is built with a gradual increase in the complexity of the topics, and the presentation of the material is quite accessible. However, we focused more on grammar, as it is the main basis for learning any foreign language.
Orest Vasylko believes that there is no need to study vocabulary separately, as it is acquired during reading, and in class it is better remembered in the context. Of course, we analyzed the basic words, but more attention was paid to grammatical practice. There were also creative tasks, for example, we wrote recipes, and read various texts to develop our vocabulary.
Polytechnic has established many relationships within the professional competencies of the Center for Italian-Ukrainian cooperation. Thus it organized a meeting with the Rector of one of the Italian universities. We also had the opportunity to talk to the manager of Dolce & Gabbana, who told and showed how to create new clothing collections. It was quite a useful conversational practice for all students of the course.
It is incredibly cool that Polytechnic gives everyone the opportunity to attend such language courses free of charge. But, most importantly is to clearly know your purpose and complete the work started, as learning foreign languages requires a lot of inspiration. We have a good teacher, but this is not enough, as there must also be the desire of the student».