Language Centres at a Crossroads

The University of the Third Age comes under the aegis of Lifelong Learning at Charles University, and language courses are provided by different faculties at this university. This poster will focus on the language courses, and especially English Language Courses, which are supervised and taught by the lecturers in the Language Centre at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. The concept of education as part of lifelong learning is increasingly important. With greater longevity seniors or elderly people are still active, even after they retire, and they want to keep up with advances in different branches of science, humanities, technology etc. On the one hand, this allows different universities and schools to prepare programmes for special groups of senior university graduates from different fields, and hence to offer a broader range of courses to another age group. On the other hand, this development brings with it new challenges in the areas of strategy, course content, choice of teaching methods, and the general approach and organization of this type of education. These students are neither teens or twenty-year olds nor just adults: they are educated and many have higher degrees, as well as rich personal and work histories. There is a long tradition of language courses for the University of Third Age at our Faculty, and this has undergone some changes, too. The proposed poster would like to present this development and especially investigate the overall approach of these courses, with respect to the languages taught in different academic years, the length of programmes and last but not least the pedagogical approach the faculty and lecturers adopted in order to adapt language teaching to an ageing population. Another task was to prepare particular topics, since these students come to us with their own histories with languages, and they expect something new and original. This poster will present the above-mentioned tendencies in language teaching at the University of Third Age and explain the methods and approaches adopted over the years in the Language Centre of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. 

Poster se zaměří na představení kurzů jazyků v rámci Univerzity třetího věku (U3V) garantovaných a vyučovaných lektory jazyků z Jazykového centra FF UK v Praze. Systém programů U3V podléhá pravidlům stanoveným řádem celoživotního vzdělávání na UK. Pořádání tohoto typu programů je trendem současné moderní doby, kdy se věk prodlužuje a informační a technologická exploze nadále pokračuje. Tyto kurzy jazyků v rámci U3V na FF UK prošly nyní již několikaletým vývojem. Poster ukáže tento vývoj a zároveň se pokusí definovat specifika výuky cizích jazyků často velmi vzdělaných seniorů, odborníků v různých oblastech. Tito lidé nejsou dvacátníci, ale jsou stále aktivní v životě a od těchto kurzů mají dosti vysoká očekávání, která se vyučující ve všech zásadních oblastech jako např. v metodologii výuky, přístupu k posluchačům, výběru témat i v celkovém zaměření programu snaží naplnit.

PhDr. & Mgr. Marie Hanzlíková is now a part time lecturer at the Language Centre (FF UK, Prague) with a long history of teaching and management experience there. She graduated from FF UK – English and Russian languages. She has specialized in academic language, soft skills, eLearning, blended learning and critical thinking within the university at all levels – from graduates to postgraduates, but she also taught tailored courses at different ministries and companies in Prague. In the late 1990s she was one of the first individual members of CercleS and the founder of CASALC in the Czech Republic.

Tereza Límanová received an MA in French and Czech at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague, and a second MA in Czech from the School of Slavonic Studies at the University of London. She works as a lecturer at the Language Centre (FF UK, Prague). There she specialises in English courses focused on literary interpretation (Close reading) and on the visual arts courses for students of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. As a translator, she introduced to Czech readers Joseph Mitchell, a key writer of the New Yorker. In 2014 she published a memoir Domeček (Revolver Revue Publishers). It was serialized by Czech Radio in 2018. She also paints and has had many exhibitions of her work. Her next autobigraphical novel, Drzá líná neschopná, will be published this spring in Argo.