PROJECT NAME: EMPOWERING CIVIL SERVANTS WITH ENGLISH FOR STRENGTHENING UKRAINE

PROJECT DURATION

01/10/2023 - 30/09/2025

PROJECT SUMMARY

A comprehensive course of professional English is aimed to address the professional needs of civil servants, government officials and Ukrainian professionals in strategic industries with an emphasis on development of the communicative competences. The course design and delivery will incorporate the US experience and resources for training civil servants and government officials. The reach of the program is extended to both local residents and the representatives of internally displaced citizens. The expected impact is to gear up a group of specialists who are to carry out their professional duties in the conditions of wartime and the period of postwar rebuilding of the country. To provide project participants with the opportunity to understand how civil service systems work in the USA and Europe, the project webinars and workshops with our colleagues from, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany), Linköpings University (Sweden), Tartu University (Estonia) will be organized.

PROGRAM GOALS AND OBJECTIVES:

Goal: to enable learners to effectively participate in the administrative events and carry out professional activities in the international context. 

Objectives: 

1. Improving the quality of English language learning for Ukrainian professionals who need to use English in their work, in online, blended or face-to-face formats. 

2. Developing a comprehensive course of English for civil servants and government officials. 

3. Developing the capacity of a group of 80-100 Ukrainian government officials to interact with international partners orally and in writing in a range of communicative situations. 

4. Enlarging both professional and general vocabulary as well as the knowledge of functional phrases necessary for effective interaction.

PROGRAM ACTIVITIES:  

1. Weekly classes focusing on specific language skills, such as speaking, listening, reading, and writing, using relevant professional contexts. These will provide targeted practice and feedback. 

2. Interactive online course tasks: individually completed tasks that include multimedia content, interactive exercises, and quizzes, allowing students to learn vocabulary and functional phrases at their own pace and convenience. 

3. Communication in pairs, small groups and whole group discussions will improve students’ confidence and help lower anxiety and speaking barriers. 

4. Role-play exercises simulating real-world scenarios where government officials need to interact with international partners, engaging participants in practicing effective communication strategies will help practice the use of functional phrases and specialized vocabulary in context. 

5. Case Studies and Discussions: Analyzing real-life cases of successful and unsuccessful international communication to extract lessons and best practices. 

6. Authentic Materials Analysis: Analyzing authentic texts such as articles, reports, and presentations to identify and learn new vocabulary and phrases. 

7. Collaborative Projects: Assigning group projects that require participants to apply newly acquired vocabulary and functional phrases in collaborative tasks. 

8. Webinars and workshops with foreign partners will provide the chance to implement the skills and abilities in real time communication in a professional context as well as to widen the participants’ scope and the ability to navigate diverse international contexts. 

PROGRAM METHODS AND DESIGN:  

The curriculum on the skills and competency-based approach is designed to solve the stated problem and achieve the goal by using such methods as communicative language teaching; CLIL (content-language integrated learning); TBL (task-based learning); learner-centered approach, individual and group work; classroom discussions and debates; video and web-based exploration activities; problem-solving, projects and case studies; online webinars with experts from US universities and governmental bodies. We plan to use US-developed GovLoop - the Knowledge Network for Government https://www.govloop.com/ as a resource for civil servants and government officials for developing their professional language competences, sharing experience, collaboration and communication with American colleagues to promote mutual understanding and democratic values using sufficient English language proficiency. 

 The project is supported by the Regional English Language Office of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. 

Contact person: Lesia Doroshenko doroshenko.l.v@nmu.one