SEEU Review vol. 6 Nr. 2 (pdf) - South East European University

Elena Spirovska, MSc.; Hajrulla Hajrullai; Luiza Zeqiri, MA.; Serdal Xhemali; VeronikaKareva, MSc.; Artan Limani, MA.IntroductionStudents’ Background, Language Center Course Design and SkillsAlthough a lot of changes and revisions of the educational curricula tookplace in the last decade, the Macedonian educational system can be stilldescribed as traditional. Most of the students who are enrolled at SEEUniversity are coming from traditional high school, which curricula includea large number of courses, 11-12 per academic year on average. As a resultmost of the students are overwhelmed with the schedule overloaded withconstantly increasing number of school hours per week and lots ofassignments given as homework. On the other hand the practical aspects oflearning are not emphasized enough. For instance, most of the schools arenot equipped properly in terms of computer technology or laboratories,which reduce the resources available to the students on textbooks andmoderately equipped libraries at best. As a result, learning is purelytheoretical. Other factors influence this educational system as well. Forinstance, the class size is usually 30-35 students per class, the workingconditions are often inappropriate (small classrooms, not enough space) andteachers are not sufficiently paid. These factors often create traditionalenvironment, which results in overemphasizing the teachers’ role andreduces students’ input and their interaction with the teacher. Universitysettings often reflect the above described high school environment in someaspects. The courses are heavily based on theoretical studies and lectures.As far as language courses are concerned, they are included in theprimary and secondary schools curricula. The majority of the students aretaking foreign language courses from the fifth grade, which means from theage of 10-11 which was only recently changed to introducing languagecourses earlier. At the moment, LC is servicing 1610 students in the full timeprogram (English, Albanian, Macedonian, Italian) plus 135 PTS students,which is 1745 totally (Tetovo campus). In addition, 413 regular studentsstudy in Skopje as regular students and 100 as part time students. The totalnumber of students who attend the courses provided by the language centeris 2258.The challenges that the Language Center staff encounters, both as anindependent functioning unit and in relation with the Faculties are numerous.In terms of concept and function within the university education inMacedonia, where traditional academic setting was predominant, a language174