[Music] We invite you to listen to episodes of the new
podcast series "Polish Studies Newsletter Meetings" titled "Engaged Polish Studies."
Polish studies are not a helpless observation of the world.
They provide tools to find one's way in it, help understand it, and prevent exclusion
and loneliness.
This is the Polish studies we want to showcase through our project:
Engaged Polish Studies.
[Music]
[Mariola Wilczak:] Good morning, everyone. Today we join you in Lutsk. On Monday, October 6th,
the sixth Scientific and Methodological Panel
, organized by the Lesya Ukrainka National University in Lutsk, began in Lutsk.
Today, we are hosting Professor Svitlana Sukhareva and Associate Professor Natalia Tsiolyk
from the Department of Polish Studies and Translation at the Faculty of Philology and Journalism of the
Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University in Lutsk.
The first such scientific and methodological panel took place in November 2020
, and since then, six such panels have been held.
Participants in this year's meeting, including Professor Przemysław Gębal
from the Institute of Applied Linguistics at the University of Gdańsk,
emphasized your activity and the fact that the Lutsk center is a leading
center in Ukraine when it comes to teaching Polish as a foreign language.
He also emphasized that Lutsk can successfully participate in projects
that are not limited to the Ukrainian context.
Lutsk is also a very important place on our geopolitical map of Polish studies.
We
have also collaborated with your university and with you
on numerous projects implemented by the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
I would like to ask what,
in your opinion, makes this event unique and special?
[Svitlana Sukhareva:] Perhaps I should first say a few words about the idea that emerged
around the time we started collaborating with the "Polish Studies Bulletin."
We noticed we were moving in a strictly academic direction.
We have various international conferences,
we participate in various conferences, but the methodological and
didactic aspects are still somewhat lacking.
We learned a lot on the website, yes, on the "Polish Studies Bulletin" website
. We also had the idea that we wanted
to start something here in Volhynia, in Łódź, at the university.
And we first called it the Polish Studies Autumn in Lutsk.
Ms. Natalia might fill me in later.
And it was also part of the fact that we had already had a Polish Studies Olympiad for a year,
which Mr. Jerzy Kowalewski helped us organize, and it was very successful.
We thought that perhaps scientists or practitioners would also
want to join the Polish Studies Autumn in Lutsk.
And so the idea arose that we needed to have such a scientific-didactic panel.
The word "didactic" is quite appropriate here, and we named it from the perspective
of Polish language teaching in secondary and higher education,
so as not to alienate teachers from each other, not to alienate them in such a way,
but to connect with various organizations and propose cooperation.
We not only approached the "Polish Studies Bulletin," but also the
Institute of Pedagogy of the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine,
the Volyn Institute of Postgraduate Pedagogical Education,
and also Mr. Jerzy [Kowalewski] as the initiator of the Olympiad, the EduNowa Bilingualism Foundation.
And now I'd like to ask Ms. Natalia
to add to these memories. [Natalia Ciołyk:] These memories are very emotional,
even though so many years have passed, because it all actually started in 2019,
when the idea arose that we should organize a Polish language Olympiad.
Why did this idea arise? Because Olympiads in English,
Spanish, French—who knows which foreign languages
​​our students are learning—have been held in Ukraine for years, Olympiads for students.
There were no Polish language Olympiads at all, they didn't exist.
Olympiads for students—yes, Olympiads for school students—these Olympiads have existed for years.
Our consulate also organized such Olympiads, but there was nothing for students.
We have a lot of graduates of Polish schools among our students
, and my children come from school and say, "Ms. Natalia,
I've been going to Olympiads all my life, I've participated,
and here I am, a Polish studies student, no Olympiad. How can that be? There are no Olympiads?"
Well, there are no Olympiads, and for many years now, everyone has had Olympiads in the fall, but
there are no Polish language Olympiads. So we started thinking
about the format of this Olympiad, and that's exactly what we were working on at the time,
the Freedom and Democracy Foundation, where Mr. Jerzy Kowalewski worked.
We approached them about organizing something like this,
an Olympiad for students, and that's when the idea was born: it should
n't be your typical Olympiad, where grammar, reading comprehension, and all sorts of traditional things are tested
. It has to be something, well, specific,
I don't know, different, because Polish studies students always do things a little differently than everyone else.
And the idea arose that it would be Lutsk Dialogues with Polish Culture.
The idea was that a student learning Polish shouldn't just learn
Polish from textbooks; they simply need to be able to function normally
in a language-rich environment. That is, they need to know how to ask for a key,
for example, in a gas station restroom. They need to know
why people laugh at a meme or an advertisement while standing at the same station.
And not always, right? Our students, learning beautiful Polish from textbooks,
don't always have time to pay attention to such things during their classes.
At our university,
the idea of ​​free-choice disciplines also emerged, and we introduced
some language subjects related to culture and
local studies. This also generated widespread interest among students
, and that's why the idea arose to organize the first Polish language Olympiad in 2019
, titled Lutsk Dialogues with Polish Culture.
And it was a very unusual Olympiad. The first time it happened,
we were a bit apprehensive because there were no travel or accommodation costs to cover
. But when we wrote to our colleagues and friends
from other projects across Ukraine, the rule was that only students
from Ukrainian universities should participate, including students who were learning Polish,
regardless of the department. Some were studying history, others were studying
international relations, others were Polish studies, but were learning Polish in
their respective fields. And that was precisely the rule: students from Ukrainian universities
who were studying, who were learning Polish.
We probably had over 80 applications that first year, and it was like this:
at 4 a.m., someone was taking the train, who was taking the bus, to Lutsk. We had a group of
pilots, students, who would meet our guests. We would make tea here.
The entire floor of our university was dedicated to the Olympics, because somewhere
we had to change, eat a sandwich, and prepare for the Olympics—
not linguistically, but humanly,
physiologically. And then there was this Olympiad in a huge hall.
There were a lot of people, well, I don't know how to put it, a lot of them,
because there were a lot of students, and each student had a lecturer with
them. After the Olympiad, the students went sightseeing around the city. And here in this hall,
where I'm sitting at the round table now, there were just piles
of papers lying around, and we were checking everything. Mr. Jerzy
was already in charge, and during this checking, during these
conversations, the idea came up: listen, the students have something, and we're
gathering as an Olympiad anyway. Maybe we should do something else
for ourselves. Because everyone, while checking the Olympiad assignments, talks about how
they learn Polish at university, whether as a first language, a second language, a
third language, or even a choice of other languages. And I can actually say
that the first such panel was held back then when
the Olympiads were being reviewed, because the discussions lasted until the evening, because it really took us a while,
because we had to check various things on paper
and everyone remembered how the prizes were chosen,
Because Mr. Jerzy arrived with a whole trunkload of various prizes. Everything was laid out
from the floor to the tables on a tablecloth, a blanket
, and the first person to score the most points would go out
and choose their gift from everything on the floor
and table. And it looked so interesting because everyone approached,
and everyone's eyes darted around, wondering what they wanted, whether it was a book, a piece of candy, a
pillow, or something else. It was so unusual, wasn't it?
Because the organizers always think about who gets what for first place, second place,
or third place, and so that also added a different atmosphere
than a typical Olympics. And finally , it all started in 2019
, because only because we were already in quarantine in 2020,
we thought the quarantine was over and we'd all finally meet again.
Unfortunately, this war of ours is still going on, but we hope, we're keeping our fingers crossed,
that it has to end someday and that we'll finally meet again,
not for these meetings or this online Olympiad, but in person,
and that we'll build a pile of these gifts again and we'll choose
who wrote for it. Because it was very—I don't even know how to say it, I'm saying,
I still have these emotions, because it was—well, it was three days that were very abnormal
in a human sense, because I wasn't actually at home. And here
the dean told us: what have you done to the faculty? I mean, the whole floor was
a Polish language Olympiad. But until then, everyone remembers it
as an event that simply brings everyone together,
because we know each other somewhere, we meet at various
competitions or conferences,
but precisely in such a way that the students connect with each other, the lecturers,
the academic staff. You simply don't get such emotions anywhere else,
and you don't get such conversations anywhere else either.
Even these very intelligent discussions, these panel discussions, were also great,
but these conversations among ourselves: how it works, how it works for you, how it works for us,
and what it's like for us, what textbooks you use, and how this topic works, how you study it,
how you learn it. And honestly, one very positive effect
is that we formed a couple back then, because one of our students and a student
from Kamianets-Podilskyi are a couple, and now they've been together ever since
. And it all started when our boyfriend Dima went to the train station somewhere
, just to meet a group of students
who had come here for the Olympiad. I think that even though we have a couple of students,
the effects are linguistic, educational, and academic,
as well as family-related. Sometimes we joke about it, saying that when they have children,
they'll be grandchildren of the Olympics.
We hope this tradition will be maintained as long as possible.
That's why we need to do it again, not remotely online, but
in person, so maybe some couples will get along.
Personal life is also very important to people.
[Mariola Wilczak:] I wanted to ask, ladies, what differences do you see between this first meeting
and this year's panel? What differences are noticeable?
Because the fact that the world has changed, for example because of the war, is obvious.
But how did that affect these differences in organization and conduct?
[Natalia Ciołyk:] Well, if I may, because if anything, I'll tell you what I remember right away: for example, it's very sad
because we have very active scientists and students from Zaporizhzhia.
Unfortunately, in Zaporizhzhia, they have catastrophic power outages,
with no connection options, and unfortunately, Zoom hasn't been working for a long time
. That means they write on Viber that they can send an email,
but it won't connect from any device, from any other location.
It simply doesn't work. I don't know why. I think for some
security reasons, it seems that connection to Zoom is limited.
And they, for example, couldn't participate in the proceedings. Even today, if students
have such a meeting on Zoom, the students from Zaporizhzhia simply
won't be able to join, and we'll send them separately via email.
These links to the tasks, asking them to complete them, are unfortunately things like that...
Similarly, for example, at the beginning of the Olympiad, before writing, we always ask
if everyone is in a safe place. In case of any threats,
if necessary, whether to extend the time or simply
restrict access to the Olympiad, and then, once the alarms have passed,
reopen access to the Olympiad. We always ask this because, well, safety
comes first. It's not like the Olympics are the Olympics, but everyone has to be
in a safe place. And obviously, internet access
isn't very good in these shelters. And you can't write about the Olympiad either. You also need to have
some technical capabilities, and in terms of content, you'll be able to explore it.
On the other hand, I want to say that it's not just a sad picture, not
about war, coronavirus, and so on, but at the beginning, the first edition
of this panel, it was more like an international conference.
However, we were still moving in that direction for a while. Now, however,
we've included a lot of students. If there's a language, literature,
translation section, and we have a methodology section,
students always participate. It's so cool, they're
doing their theses, and they have the opportunity to simply have their work approved, because
they can present a section, some studies, or
part of their research. Well, you can try it out,
right? During these panel discussions, you can answer questions
, and then they don't have that fear anymore. Once they have these theses defended,
it's already been practiced. This is also a very positive
practice, isn't it? Because students haven't had exams for a long time now,
because of the coronavirus and the war, the traditional ones, like before.
For safety reasons, these exams are
no longer available in their usual format, and children have simply weaned themselves
from such public appearances, from such public presentations.
Not everyone, because some people are simply embarrassed and afraid to appear anywhere, even though they know everything,
have everything written down. "What if they ask me something, and I don't answer something?"
And they're so scared, but here they can practice it, and
even in their more serious presentations,
they're calmer, they know it's nothing special, that these are just casual conversations
, not to show anyone they're stupid
or haven't learned anything, but just to ask, because maybe someone, even students,
can research, describe, and read up on some very interesting things,
because you can't handle everything, right? There's so much information these days
that even some examples of literary texts
don't always notice that something has been published in Polish,
and students sometimes even figure it out faster than we do.
[Svitlana Sukhareva:] And we have two more important things. First, a sponsor: the Consulate General
of the Republic of Poland in Lutsk. And even if Mr. Jerzy doesn't have those gifts anymore,
we always have some gifts and certificates for the panel participants.
We encourage young people, so they're very eager to participate; they're looking forward to these days.
We know a certain Mr. Yuri Prokopenko who joins us every year.
He's very interested. We also know others who graduated from school,
participated in the Olympiad, participated in the panel, and it turned out they were
still students at the school. Then, as students, they participated, and one guy
won first place, received the first prize, was thrilled
, and still participates in the panel and the Olympiad. Secondly,
besides sponsorship, there's an international dimension. So, while we started
within our own circle, we're now trying to expand it.
As you've noticed, Poznań, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, joined us this year.
We also had a course there to improve our qualifications,
for which we are very grateful to the lecturers who joined us
during the plenary sessions of our panel. And as we mentioned,
Professor Przemysław Gambal represents the Institute.
Applied Linguistics at the University of Gdańsk and the Institute of
Polish Language Development in Warsaw. We think this is already a significant achievement for us
, and we'll continue to pursue this direction. That's why we always say
we invite Polish, especially Polish, partners to collaborate.
We're such a rewarding field where we can do anything, right?
Publish textbooks, then some scholarly collections, hold various meetings,
and also these projects. Maybe one day this Polish Studies Autumn will become a
major project. We don't know yet.
[Mariola Wilczak:] Yes, thank you very much. I'd also like to ask about the competition about knowledge about Poland. How is it going this year?
[Natalia Ciołyk:] Well, maybe I'll tell you, because
I'm in charge of the technical side, and the various submissions and technical side
of getting the tasks into Forbes are my job. It works like this:
if the first year, as I said, there were about 80 people,
then it stayed more or less the same for several years, even though
it was online now. The highest number was last year, with 108 people.
This year, we have 93 applications, but the important thing is probably not so much the number of registered participants
as the geography itself, because, as I said, we have geography from Ukraine,
from Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, to Ivano-Frankivsk. So, in fact, Ivonofankivskyi,
Lviv, and Polish students from various faculties are also applying here.
At our university, they study in various faculties,
including the history department and the international relations department, because our university
is implementing double-degree projects, and many students are learning Polish,
and they are also eager to participate in such an Olympiad.
We do have a lot of applications at the moment. [Svitlana Sukhareva:] But these tasks are becoming increasingly difficult,
because perhaps the Polish reality is a bit different than in these textbooks.
Maybe that's why.
[Natalia Ciołyk:] If someone is completing the Olympiad tasks so unspontaneously, so calmly,
it's a good idea to take a closer look, because some of the hints for some questions
are in the pictures for the tasks before... If someone is attentive and precise enough,
they'll notice that some of the hints can be found in the test itself. It seems so,
because I've already analyzed them, because every year I do these tasks,
I mean the technical ones, from the technical side, because
Mr. Jerzy Kowalewski always comes up with them for us. But I would say they're, well, not easier,
maybe more like, there's less politics this year, because of things like that...
not even politics, but things related to symbols and so on. Because if,
for example, in the first Olympiad, there was a question about "is this the Polish coat of arms?" and
it was the Polish coat of arms, only without the crown on the eagle, well, that was a problem for some people
, because I understand the students are in Lutsk, and not everyone there might be familiar with it,
and not every teacher tells us in class that there was a time
when the Polish coat of arms didn't have a crown. Well, for example, it was a bit strange to me
that there were so many errors in this question, whether it was a Polish
flag, and it depends on how the flag is hung in the picture. I remember someone
saying that even Poles, when they noticed a flag at Belweder Palace
, called the city hall and said the Polish flag was hanging upside down,
only to find out it was from some other country, Monaco, with
the flag upside down, not the Polish one. Some Poles also don't really know
whether it's red on top or white on top. Well, I'd say there are fewer such things.
But this year, for example, there's a question about what paprikash (paprikash), a canned food, is made of
, and whether it contains chicken, pasta, rice, or something else. It
's definitely paprikash, but do they know what paprikash is made of? Because that
's another question, does anyone wonder what paprikash is made of?
So I say, it's not so much that they're more difficult, but perhaps
they're more geared towards everyday life. There are fewer symbols,
things related to borders, and other things, and more of those,
I'd say everyday questions. And in my opinion, that's better, because when
they go on various student exchanges, they go on various
educational stays, well, things like that, because when I first come here
For example, I'll go to Poland and pick up this paprika from a shelf somewhere in Biedronka, so
you have to find out what it's made of. Then you'll know.
[Svitlana Sukhareva:] And we can also say that
we include these materials from previous Olympiads at the end of these scientific collections and say they're
Olympiad results, some downloadable materials, so that next year
there won't be any such questions. So you can still learn everything later.
Natalia Ciołyk:] Well, yes, because the questions aren't repeated. Unless
they're transformed somehow, maybe some images are repeated, but the questions definitely
aren't repeated. [Mariola Wilczak:] Regarding the event, which is still ongoing,
I also wanted to ask about the publications that resulted from these meetings.
Could you tell me a few words about these publications, where
they can be found, whether they're available online, or perhaps
distributed to libraries somewhere? [Svitlana Sukhareva:] We have a partnership with the publishing house Weża-Druk
, and every year we publish a collection of publications
by our students and researchers, practitioners, and teachers in print
, and every year they ask us when the printed version will finally be released. But now,
during the war, it's not that easy when, for example, someone won't give us
the printing costs, right? And so on. That's why we do it in different ways.
We also have an electronic version now. We're posting this electronic version
in our Volyn University Library repository.
You can just type the name of our panel there, and we'll find it. And from previous years,
all the electronic versions have already been deciphered
, and we can find everything there. That's great. [Natalia Ciołyk:] Well, it's definitely good
because you don't have to send it, spend shipping costs, or print it. And I have to say,
I think this digital version is better, because even if I want to refer to
a text myself, I can find it more easily on the computer than at home, somewhere among the books.
Although I prefer the printed versions, I like having a book
in my hands, but everyone is already accumulating a bit of this collection at home. So, I'm saying
the electronic version is cheaper and faster. But
we still have to return the paper copies to the library. These are the ones printed for libraries.
And for participants, who submit materials for printing,
everyone receives either a link to the library where they can download them,
or we send a PDF of the electronic version for everyone to have.
[Mariola Wilczak:] In that case, we'll provide a link to this electronic version in the episode description
so listeners... [Natalia Ciołyk:] Right now, the link will be to last year's materials,
to last year's materials, because after this conference, after this panel,
it will all be collected in about a month, processed,
edited, and then it will be ready by the end of November [2025].
[Mariola Wilczak:] Oh, great. I'm very pleased, because on the first day
of this general meeting, attention was also drawn to the substantive value of these materials
and the high level of research you are conducting, so
it's worth remembering that too. [Music]
The "Engaged Polish Studies" podcast series was produced as part of the
"Polish Studies and the Challenges of the Modern World" project. It was co-financed from the state budget
under the Science for
Society II program of the Minister of Education and Science. The project number is provided in the description [NdS-II/SP/0264/2024/01].
We invite you to listen to subsequent episodes available on
Spreaker, Spotify, and YouTube, as well as in the online "Polish Studies Bulletin."
See you soon. [Music]