Over the course of five days in August, SSU English Teacher Ben Stewart led an English-language summer camp for 53 Ukrainian children outside of Kurhan.  The camp itself, known as Camp EXCITE, was a longstanding tradition in the Sumy region, but had been inactive since the evacuation in 2013.  Benjamin and fellow PCV Lauren Grubbs wrote a grant to finance the camp's revival, and with the help of the Camp's former director, Olga Vasilyevna Prihodko, made Camp EXCITE a reality once again.  The camp included lessons on Volunteerism, Civic Activism, and Leadership, while also mixing in specialized mini-master classes on such subjects as photography, American slang, embroidery, Diversity in the USA, Introductory Chinese, and much more.  The Camp was staffed by 8 American Peace Corps Volunteers, 2 EVS Volunteers (SVETLANA: This stands for European Volunteer Services), 11 Ukrainians, and supported by Sumy's Center for Euroinitiatives.

The Foreign languages department actively cooperates with the secondary schools of Sumy. It includes participation in the “Days of Science” at Sumy State University, visits to schools in the project on Intercultural Commuication and English Day Summer Camp. This activity facilitates the popularity of Sumy State University among school children and draws attention to the necessity of learning a foreign language (English). We welcome you to join our initiatives.

On June, 7 the instructors of the Foreign languages department participated in the training dedicated to Teambuilding. The training was supported by the Trade union of Sumy State University and held by the psychologist Liudmyla Kolisnyk. The training aims at the development of the skills of cooperation, empowering the communication in a team, identifying strong and weak sides of the participants and distribution of roles, analyzing the process of decision making. The instructors of the department liked this experience, found out their roles in the team, managed to solve some tasks successfully in the process of joint work. Some of them took part in the psychological training for the first time and would like to do that again. We consider strong team to be the reason for the success of the organization.

The Foreign languages department initiated the program of academic mobility to France from May 01 to May 12, 2017. Its aim is to get certification training at Université Lumière Lyon 2, France. The theme of the program is Intercultural Communication. The instructors Tetiana Aleksakhina, Natalia Usenko and Viktoria Kurochkina presented the activity of Sumy State University in terms of innovative technologies in teaching foreign languages. A postgraduate student Kostiantyn Zavrazhny, students and high school children with the instructors had lectures in French, History of University, Intercultural Communication and took part in trainings and seminars. The activity of the program also included negotiating on further cooperation.

Video on the visit can be found by this link - https://youtu.be/NCvNygpnt3I

Svitlana Mikhno, instructor of Foreign languages department

The representatives of the Foreign languages department and the Language Centre of Sumy State University had a business trip to Lviv with the aim to get acquainted with the work of the similar departments, especially the Centre of English Academic Communication at Ivan Franko National University. Its head Tetiana Yakhontova is one of the leading specialists in this field, a professor, Doctor of Philology Sciences, the participant of the IREX and Fulbright programmes.

Tetiana gave information on the activity of her Centre, peculiarities of teaching written English communication, particularly analytical writing in academic and scientific fields, to masters, postgraduate students and specialists of diverse majors. In their turn, the head of the Foreign languages department Halyna Lytvynenko and the director of the Language Centre at Sumy State University Svitlana Zolotova shared the experience of organizing independent and extracurricular activity with the help of the Language Centre, cooperation with companies and enterprises of Sumy, using interactive methods of teaching English.

The cooperation between two centres was also considered, outlining the possible benefits for the students and instructors of Lviv and Sumy universities.

BUSINESS TRIP TO LVIV UNIVERSITIES

The instructor of Foreign languages department Alla Diadechko had an opportunity to master her English language speaking in Great Britain. Being invited by the Windzor Education Group she not only saw a lot of places of interest, but also managed to discuss the peculiarities of studying process with British representatives of higher educational institutions.

Students’ scientific works in foreign languages were presented at the eleventh scientific practical students, postgraduates and young researchers conference “To Make the World Smarter and Safer” that took place in March 2017. It is organized by the Language Centre of Foreign Languages Department at Sumy State University and helps young researchers to draw attention to the advancements in the field of Information Technology, Robotics, Engineering, Medicine and Humanities. This year a big part of the conference was dedicated to intercultural communication, its peculiarities, problems and ways to solve them. The invited speakers were a Peace Corps volunteer Benjamin Geoffrey Stewart and a volunteer from Center for Euroinitiatives Sebatian Wankiewicz. The languages of the conference were English, German, French, Ukrainian.

The students who major in Advertising under the guidance of the instructor of the department Natalia Usenko successfully completed the course of Professional English and performed final projects dedicated to the creation of their own brands, logos and developed advertising strategies for them. Their works can be looked through by this link https://elearning.sumdu.edu.ua/s/b2-dmw

The instructor of the Foreign languages department Oksana Hladchenko and a Peace Corps volunteer Benjamin Geoffrey Stewart took part in the Peace Corps seminar on Project Management. They developed their own project “Increasing the awareness of Sumy pensioners on healthy and socially active life style”.

International badminton tournament among amateurs and sports veterans took place in Kyiv on March 3-5, 2017. 169 sportsmen from Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, India, Malaysia etc. The instructor of Foreign languages department Oksana Hladchenko presented Sumy State University and took the first place in the age group 45+.