Department of the Slavic and the Germanic Languages

The Department of Slavic and Germanic Philology and Translation was founded in 1919 along with the establishment of the university. At that time, it was part of the Faculty of History and Philology and was called the Department of Russian Language. In 1991, it was transformed into the Department of Slavic Languages as it taught Polish and Czech, and in 2003 it was reorganised into the Department of Slavic and Germanic Languages to meet the needs of the Faculty of Philology, the students of which mainly majored in specialities that included English and German. In 2023, the need arose to establish the Department of Slavic and Germanic Philology and Translation, as the educational programme “Slavic Languages and Literatures (including translation), Major — Polish” in the speciality 035 Philology, requires appropriate teacher training and direction of scientific research.

The heads of the department during this period were (information available since 1946):

• Maria Khramoi (1946–1956).
• Vasyl Prylypko (1956–1958).
• Yevhen Sydelnykov (1958–1962).
• Aza Papina (1962–1972, 1974–1976).
• Mykola Havronov (November-December 1973, 1976–1977).
• Mykhailo Letskin (1977–1989).
• Nataliia Misiats (1989–2012).
• Tetiana Nedashkivska (since January 2013).

The most outstanding achievements of the department are in the field of Slavic linguistics. In addition to participating in numerous scientific conferences and publishing hundreds of articles in reputable Ukrainian and foreign journals, the teachers are involved in the creation of textbooks for schools (Associate Professor A. Pryimak). Thanks to the initiative of N. Misiats, students were able to learn Polish, for this purpose she developed the textbook ‘Polish for Ukrainians’ (2006). And now Polish language teachers are grateful to the author for the chance to expand their professional opportunities.

The collective monograph ‘Scientific Notes of the Department of Slavic and Germanic Languages’ dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Ivan Franko State University and the 100th anniversary of the department was published in 2019 and became a substantial result of the department’s work. Since the same year, there has been a journal for the publication of student achievements called ‘’Language Scholars‘’ (“Znavtsi mov”), where higher education students take their first steps in scientific research under the guidance of teachers. It is important that this journal grew out of the tradition of holding an annual competition of the same name at the Institute of Philology and Journalism, which has been known since the late eighties of the last century. This was the path from entertainment to research.

Since January 2013, the Department has been headed by Tetiana Nedashkivska, PhD in Philology, Professor. The Head of the Department has more than one hundred and fifty publications, including monographs, 10 articles in Scopus and Web of Science, more than 20 scientific methodological publications, including the educational and methodological complex ‘Theory, History and Methods of Linguistics: A Summary’ (textbook); “Linguocompass” (notebook for individual work on the course of general linguistics); “Linguonavigator” (notebook for individual study of current problems of modern linguistics); teaching aid “General Linguistics”, etc. Under the scientific supervision of Associate Professor T. Nedashkivska, three PhDs in Philology were trained in the speciality 10.02.01 — Ukrainian language (Kushmar L. V. ‘Vocabulary of the economic sphere in the linguistic worldview of Ukrainians’, Denysevych O. V. ‘Advertising vocabulary in the structure of the linguistic worldview of Ukrainians’) and a PhD in Philology in the speciality 10.02.21 — Structural, Applied and Mathematical Linguistics (Zahorodnia O. F. ‘Associative fields of socio-political vocabulary in the linguistic worldview of Ukrainians (computer processing of the results of a psycholinguistic experiment)’). Young PhDs work in higher education institutions in Ukraine and abroad.

The scientific work of the department is carried out within the framework of the collective topic “Current issues of text research: semantics, paradigmatics, linguodidactic and psycholinguistic aspects” in the following areas:

• psycholinguistic studies of the linguistic worldview of Ukrainians and Poles;
• peculiarities of the language of book styles and sub-styles (based on the material of Slavic and Germanic languages);
• peculiarities of scientific English;
• the language of political discourse;
• language of Internet blogs and forums;
• project methodology in specialist training;
• the situation of success in training a specialist in a foreign language;
• improving foreign language skills of students of non-specialised faculties.

The Department of Slavic and Germanic Philology and Translation, which has 8 full-time lecturers, includes PhD in Philology Professor T. Nedashkivska, PhD in Philology, Associate Professor A. Pryimak, PhDs in Pedagogy, Associate Professors O. Bashmanivskyi and L. Shevtsova (all four have certificates of academic rank), as well as Senior lecturer A. Velyka and three lecturers T. Nikishova, O. Pryshchepa, and K. Yarynovska. All lecturers are constantly working on expanding their competencies — not only improving their qualifications in Ukraine and the EU, but also obtaining C1 and B2 certificates of foreign language proficiency.

The Department’s laboratory assistant since 2023 is A. Haiduchenko.

In September 2013, the department launched the creative project ‘Art Language as a Means of Intercultural Communication’, which aims to find understanding between people of different countries and nations through the means of international languages and different cultures. The project partners are the Youth Public Organisation ‘Art Village’ and the S. Koroliov Museum of Cosmonautics. The project has undergone the following stages:

• opening of a permanent exhibition of creative works by the artists of the Art Village studio with the participation of Japanese representatives of the Chornobyl-Tyubu organisation;
• participation in the charity event to preserve the funds of the S. P. Korolyov Museum of Cosmonautics ‘Zhytomyr and Space — Flight of Creative Thought’;
• cooperation with the Art Village NGO in organising a creative contest ‘Space Mix No. 117240’;
• holding a joint creative action ‘Thoughts... with a brush’ dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko’s birth, which was attended by a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine Olena Huzenko (head of the Art Village NGO), guitar teacher of the Kosenko Music School No. 1 Ihor Anhelovskyi, philology students, and a graduate of the school No. 17 Natalia Sukhodolska;
• assistance to the Art Village NGO in holding the “Voice of Peacemaking” event, a fair of children’s artworks in support of the Ukrainian army.

Since 2014, the Department of Slavic and Germanic Philology and Translation has been training foreign students from Turkmenistan. Educational programmes and all the necessary teaching and methodological support were developed for them by Associate Professors A. Pryimak and T. Nedashkivska, Senior Lecturer A. Velyka, and Lecturer T. Nikishova. Graduates successfully teach English in educational institutions of Turkmenistan, according to the favourable feedback from their places of work, and also work in other countries of Asia and Europe.

From 7 to 11 November 2017, the Head of the Department T. Nedashkivska took part in the International Scientific Conference ‘Education and Science in the Age of Power and Happiness’, which was held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. T. Nedashkivska made a presentation on ‘Experience of the Ivan Franko Zhytomyr State University in training foreign students’.

Within the framework of the cooperation agreement between Ivan Franko Zhytomyr State University and the United States Peace Corps in Ukraine, teachers of the Department of Slavic and Germanic Philology and Translation have been working with volunteers since 2015. The topic of the collaboration is ‘Cooperation in the process of training students and sharing experience with teachers in the field of teaching English’. Senior Lecturer A. Velyka, Lecturers T. Nikishova and O. Pryshchepa provide practical assistance in preparing English classes and developing teaching aids, offer scientific advice to American teachers on foreign language teaching, hold English club meetings and scientific and methodological seminars on Team Building.

Since 2015, the teachers of the Department of Slavic and Germanic Philology and Translation have been teaching Polish to students of various specialities at the Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University who are taking semester-long courses at the Pomeranian Academy (Slupsk, Poland) under a cooperation agreement signed between the universities.

In addition, in 2015, the Department of Slavic and Germanic Philology and Translation signed an agreement on scientific cooperation with the Institute of the Polish Language of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IJP PAN). The purpose of cooperation is the exchange of university lecturers and scholars for delivering lectures and conducting research, participation in scientific conferences, preparation of joint publications and other works based on the results of scientific and methodological research, exchange of scientific and educational literature between libraries and departments, joint implementation of research projects, including international grants. The main practical achievement of this cooperation is the extensive work on the technical support of the parallel Polish corpus of texts — the alignment of English, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian literary texts, which resulted in the successful defence of 14 specialist and master’s theses.

The credo of the staff and students of the Department of Slavic and Germanic Philology and Translation has always been and remains: “Knowledge of foreign languages is the key to professional success”.