Visit to Don Bosco University in El Salvador
When one hears the country name ‘El Salvador,’ many Lithuanians would probably shake their heads and look at a map to see where it is. Admittedly, we know very little about this country. Naturally, the next question would be the following: what could Vytautas Magnus University and El Salvador have in common? And, as it turns out, there may be a lot!
The Institute of Foreign Languages of VMU has been cooperating with Don Bosco University in El Salvador for the past two years: every semester, a Spanish-English tandem learning is organised, and one semester there was an online conversation club in English, which was attended by students from Don Bosco University and the gymnasiums of S. Darius and S. Girėnas and Ariogala. Tandem learning refers to learning in pairs: half of the time, one participant teaches his/her mother tongue or a language he/she knows well, and the other half of the time, he/she learns the other language. The participants have indicated that they not only improve their language skills, but also learn about countries, cultures and traditions, and make friends. Some of them call each other every week to talk even after the semester is over. In an online conversation club, students and pupils shared cultural things: about their cities, nature, festivals, traditions… Everyone was surprised how different countries and customs can be.
Last October, Vigilija Žiūraitė, a lecturer in Spanish at VMU IFL, visited Don Bosco University as part of the Erasmus+ exchange programme. This year, on 4-8 March, Dr. Teresė Ringailienė, director of the IFL, visited El Salvador on the basis of the same Erasmus+. She gave lectures on the use of corpora in language learning/teaching and informal language teaching methods to English language students, on intercultural communication to tourism students, and on inclusive language teaching methods to postgraduate students and fellow lecturers.
During the visit, the sincere engagement of the students was truly surprising as well as the many questions they asked about the lecture material, Lithuania and Vytautas Magnus University. The possibilities of further cooperation were discussed with the colleagues: the continuation of the activities and new initiatives (e.g. joint publications).
This visit was a great opportunity to share knowledge with students and colleagues, as well as to get to know a wonderful country: its exotic nature for Lithuanian eyes, picturesque places of interest and, of course, extremely warm and sincere people. We can only hope that this meaningful communication and cooperation between two small and geographically distant, but at the same time close, countries will continue.
