Recent activities of the Natolin Language Service

The last weeks of the academic year 2018-19 were quite busy for the Natolin Language Service.

On 9 and 10 May 2019, faculty members of the Natolin Language Service participated in the international conference “Language Competencies for the 21st Century: Certification of Language Proficiency” organized by the Coordination Committee for Language Assessment at the University Of Warsaw. Our faculty members were particularly interested in presentations dedicated to the predicament of assessment, assessment of writing and oral exams, influence of the test length on students’ achievement, and cultural aspects that should be included in tests. Some panelists also provided an insight into the construction of tests for languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew and Czech. The conference took place before the June language examination session in Natolin.

Later that month, from 14 to 18 May 2019, Ms Wioletta GURDAK, Polish language professor, participated in the Erasmus+ Programme as a guest of the Slavistics Department at the Ruhr-University in Bochum (Germany). Ms GURDAK ran live language lessons with groups at different levels (from A2 to B2), and conducted peer observations resulting in the exchange of professional experience and know-how with her local counterparts. She discussed how Slavonic languages (especially Polish and Russian) are taught at the College of Europe in Natolin and illustrated the main differences between teaching Polish as a foreign language and teaching Polish as an inherited language. We look forward to further cooperating with the Ruhr-University in Bochum and to a reciprocal visit of our colleagues in Natolin very soon.

The Natolin Language Service would also like to share two recent achievements of Dr Maciej DURKIEWICZ, Italian language professor.

On 15 May 2019, Dr DURKIEWICZ was awarded at the 2019 edition of the Pietro Carrera Poetry Competition for the best unpublished collection of poems in Italian language. His poem entitled “89 notifiche non lette” won the First Prize (out of 191 entries) ex-aequo with Ms Fabia BALDI from Piombino, Italy. The competition was organized by the Accademia Il Convivio in Catania, Italy.

In March 2019, Dr DURKIEWICZ was also awarded with a Special Prize by the Albero Andronico Association in Rome for the best poem in Italian written abroad.