That’s how it started

The idea of the project originated with relation to the fact that Slavic countries joined the European Union. New possibilities of mutual economic, tourist, scientific and educational contacts were initiated. Therefore there arose the necessity of communication in all languages belonging to this group and the possibility to promote Slavic languages among other EC countries. The following aim was put: to encourage people, particularly those for whom a Slavic language is the mother tongue, to get to know other Slavic languages, as well as to enable further linguistic education to everyone who already knows any Slavic language.

We started our work on 4^th October 2004 with a meeting in Katowice, in the seat of Silesian University. The following people attended the meeting: employees of Silesian University in Katowice (Ewa Jaskóła – director of the project, Romuald Cudak, Bernadeta Niesporek-Szamburska, Jolanta Tombor), employees of the Comenius University from Bratislava (Marta Pančikova, Jana Pakarovičova), employees of University in Ljubljana (Mojca Nidorfer-Šiškovič, Simona Kranc, Ivana Petrovič, Andrej Šurla, Tjaša Alič), employees of University in Sophia (Margarita Mladenowa, Iskara Likomanowa), employees of the Palacky University in Olomouc (Marie Sobotkova, Jiři Fjala, Ivana Dobrotova), employees of Bulgarian radio (Svetla Verbanova, Paulina Novakova) and the Martin Luther University in Halle (Martin Kuhnert). Jolanta Rasmus also participated in the meeting.

The aims of the Katowice conference were the following:

• to establish principles of essential co-operation;
• to specify the ways of realization of particular elements of the plan in the first year of work;
• preliminary specification of themes and vocabulary of the internet modules;
• analysis of tasks assigned to partners in the plan of work;
• to establish deadlines of realization of particular tasks.

The schedule of essential meetings was prepared (Ljubljana - March 2005, Olomouc - May 2005, Bratislava - September 2005, Halle - May 2006, Sophia - June 2006).

It was decided that the essential works, the effect of which will be an internet programme, will be accompanied by activities promoting the project and the idea of multilingual teaching of Slavic languages, as well as evaluation activities checking the effectiveness of this method.

The websites will be developed by the employees of the Palacky University in Olomouc.

The predicted effects of these activities are, among others, the following:

• publicity leaflet, the design and realization of which were committed to the Slovakian team (final, February 2005, distribution from May 2005),
• programme for the celebration of the first anniversary of developing the European Union, the project of which was prepared by Slovenia,
• anniversary event prepared by the partners from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland with utilization of radio-bridge (the Bulgarian partner) – May 2005,
• radio broadcast informing about the project and the multilingual method organized by the Bulgarian radio,
• popularization of the project and the method within other events (Forum of the Word in Katowice, a visit in University of Foreign Languages in Beijing),
• numerous evaluation meetings (Ljubljana – March 2005, Olomouc – May 2005, Bratislava – September 2005, Sophia – June 2006), the meeting held in Halle – May 2006 will be of exceptional significance, because the multilingual method of teaching Slavic languages will be evaluated among German students of Slavic studies.