Academic Life

Students at the Ukrainian Catholic University study English during the year and all students at the ESS will have already learnt basic English grammar. The focus of the summer program is on developing listening and speaking skills and improving vocabulary. Occasionally, it may be useful to review or teach a point of grammar, but usually that is better done by experienced language teachers in a systematic way during the school year.

Most of the students will be attending the ESS for the first time and initially will be overwhelmed by the immersion into a world of native speakers. These students have had at least one year of English classes but they will need encouragement and a lot of repetition during the first week. Some of the students have attended the ESS the previous summer and will be able to operate at an intermediate level and carry on a viable conversation. Their greatest need is to expand their vocabulary.

English has an immense vocabulary and this is a continuing challenge for students at all levels. Teachers should concentrate on ways of repeating, reviewing and practicing the vocabulary which arises from class work. You can expect many students to be encountering at least one new word or phrase each minute, which means fifty words per hour, or several hundred each day. This can be overwhelming for them and easy for native-speaking teachers to forget. Obviously, teachers must limit the words they decide to concentrate on. Be prepared to write new words on the board and to review and reinforce the students’ lists of new words each day.

The Academic Program is centred on five daily classes, three in the morning and two in the afternoon. Morning classes focus on vocabulary, grammar and communication exercises. Afternoon classes include extended reading and electives. Evening activities such as study hall, spiritual talks, a movie or sports night, a talent show and a bonfire or disco round off the day.

1. Morning Classes

Morning classes start at 9:45. There are three, 50-minute classes in the morning, each given by the same teacher to a group of 7-10 students. One of these classes should be dedicated toScripture reading and for this purpose the students are provided with New Testament (for the ease of first-time students we use a simple Bible version which has a limited vocabulary base). This is an opportunity to practice pronunciation and to discuss spiritual questions.

The contents of the other morning classes are (in no particular order) speaking, listening, and vocabulary building. The structure is mainly for the teachers to decide. For what concerns books and manuals from which to take materials and ideas, the school has a small library where the teachers can search for what they need. In addition, we provide the groups with sets of manuals of the appropriate levels which the teachers are encouraged to use. Teachers are encouraged to bring English-language materials which would be appropriate for student use (e.g., magazines, newspapers, photos, audio-visual materials).

We would like to stress here that the summer school has its Academic Director and Coordinator who you can turn to in the case of lack of ideas or some other academic difficulties. In the cases where teachers have their own method of how to teach and what to use they are welcome to follow their own line on condition that it is approved by the Academic Director.

Also, it should be noted that the students are expected to keep journals of their experiences as a means of practicing writing. The students must write their journals daily. The teachers may explain specific expectations. Writing in class can also be done for the journal, but class notes and lists of new words should be kept separately. Journals will be collected every day and are intended to be an opportunity to express thoughts and feelings, to review what has been taught that day and to experiment with new ideas. Journal entries do not need to be perfect – what is most important is to write a lot and to write frequently.

2. Afternoon Classes

The first afternoon class focuses on reading skills. This class encourages students to improve their skills in reading for comprehension. Using simple texts, classes typically read aloud, discussing plot and simple literary or cultural issues. Students develop their reading as well as their speaking skills through the lexical or grammatical analysis of the texts they have read and through the discussion of these texts in class. The teachers are free to choose the reading material.

Starting in the second week of the Summer School we have elective classes as second afternoon class. The teachers are expected to prepare two mini-courses on special interest topics, generally of a cultural or religious nature. They will teach one course the second week and one the third week during the Elective periods, with the possibility of repeating one course during the last week of ESS. These week-long classes (75 minutes each afternoon for 5 days) allow the teachers and students to discuss subjects based on the unique interests and knowledge of the volunteer teachers. Previous subjects have included: Cartoons and Comic Books, American Protestantism, Gender Roles in Ukraine and the U.S., Morality and the Media, Christology, Democracy in America, Poverty in America, National Parks, Greece and the Holy Land Pilgrimages, Lives of the Saints, Marian Shrines, Philosophy and Ethics, Evangelisation, and American Music (Ukrainians love music and singing).

After a day of speaking in a foreign language students prefer interactive formats rather than lectures. One-page articles are useful for discussion, as well as audio or visual material. The students choose which electives they would like to take. The electives, like the other classes, have as their central purpose the teaching of English, so they should be interactive. Please bring easy materials for students to read or interact with on the topics you have in mind.

3. Evening Activities

In the evenings there is a mixture of group activities, spiritual programs, sports and study. It should be emphasised here that no matter what the activity is (whether it is a volleyball game or study hall) the teachers are expected to be there with the students as much as possible in order to preserve that total immersion into the English language atmosphere and to help the students to resist the temptation to slip into their mother tongue. Teachers are highly encouraged to use their particular gifts to help provide interesting evening activities, such as sing-a-song, games, art & crafts, or prayer experiences.

Summer School Requirements

In order that the school does not to turn into total entertainment the students should work regularly and their work should be continuously assessed. For this purpose the teachers will be asked to follow the formula “presentation – practice – testing,” which means that every new item that you introduce (be it a new grammatical structure, or a group of words, or a collection of useful everyday expressions) has to be practiced (for the students to retain it) and finally tested (for you to see if you have managed to put your message across and if it has been understood by the students). This means that by the end of the school students will have written at least 4 tests, supposing that there has been one test per week. At the very end of the summer school students will write their final tests. In addition to that, students have to write their journals every day. This means that every single day they should have a written task to complete which later has to be checked by the teacher.

The summer school is graded on a “pass or fail” basis. In order to receive credit for the summer school, students must attend all classes and scheduled activities, and hand in a satisfactory journal written daily.

Attendance of classes is obligatory. If the students miss more than a tenth of classes they will not receive the final certificate. In order to integrate the students’ academic performance and class attendance we suggest the following scheme:

Calculating the final grade: ( 20 + 30 + 30 + 20) / 10 = 10

There is an important observation to be made here. The summer school is not only about learning English, it is also about living a rich spiritual life through participation in different religious services and evening activities. This should certainly be taken into account when the final grade is calculated. If a person is not very good at learning languages but does his or her best, takes an active part in the summer school life and is regularly present at the liturgies then the teacher can certainly give a higher grade than that resulting from the above mentioned calculation.

Award of Certificates

At the end of the School certificates are awarded to students who have done the following:

• Fulfilled the summer school requirements (who have written all the tests and have produced good results and submitted their journals regularly)
• Achieved a final grade of more than 6,5
• Missed no more than one – tenth of their classes
• Behaved in conformity with to the general rules of the summer school.