Széchenyi István University, which is becoming increasingly popular with international students, places great emphasis on quality, student-friendly education and the continuous training of its staff. In this spirit, the institution offers several opportunities for staff to further develop their language skills.

"We are proud to have nearly a thousand international students studying at our institution this semester, with around 40 different English-taught programmes to choose from. To make them truly competitive, we know that it is essential to continually improve the language skills of our teachers," Adél Kiviharju-Turi, Head of the Centre for Foreign Language Education at Széchenyi István University, told us.

She stressed that the University's teaching, research and third mission activities are also being developed to strengthen the institution's domestic and international competitiveness. This is why the courses "Academic Writing" and "English for Academic Teaching" have been relaunched with the support of their departments.

Adél Kiviharju-Turi, Head of the Centre for Foreign Language Education at Széchenyi István University

"In these interactive classes, colleagues will gain tangible knowledge and practical skills that they can use directly in their work.” she commented.

Teaching academic writing in English will improve colleagues' international publishing activities by providing methodological skills and ensuring that the form of the papers, in addition to the content, is in line with the standards of Scopus-registered journals. And the teaching of academic English will promote the international quality of English-taught programmes.”

“Since we launched the courses, we have received a lot of positive feedback from participants, who, in addition to foreign language needs analysis and vocabulary development, can tailor their courses to their individual needs, for example in planning presentations, communicating with international students or academic writing. We provide them with native-speaker tutors for all these activities," she said, giving details of the free opportunities available. 

Dr Eszter Lukács, Vice President for Global Strategy at Széchenyi István University, said that it is an important goal to have committed and satisfied colleagues working at the institution in the long term. "We are trying to offer a system of tools to encourage the activities of our staff, which will make them successful, financially and socially recognised, at the same time improving the international competitiveness of the University. This is not done randomly, but in a considered manner, in line with the requirements of the world rankings in higher education. We owe our gratitude to Dr Bálint Filep, President of our institution, for providing the necessary resources," she said. 

Dr Lukács stressed that the two academic English courses are an important complement to a four-pillar system.

"Our University will cover publication fees up to €2,500 of the academic papers of its lecturers, researchers and doctoral students, and we will also recognise the achievements of colleagues with successful publications with individual scholarships. Research is also supported by subscriptions to national and international scientific databases worth around HUF 200 million per year, and linguistic verification by the Centre for Foreign Language Education of articles already written in English. All this will help to improve the academic activities of our teacher-researchers and the transfer to students of the acquired knowledge, as well as helping our University to gain a higher position in the world rankings of higher education institutions which give weighting to scientific research," summed up the Vice-President, who thanked her colleagues at the Centre for Foreign Language Education for their work.

Applications:

For more information about courses starting in the autumn and available continuously each semester, please contact nyvkp@sze.hu.