The autumn round was attended by sixteen participants from Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Hong Kong, Croatia, Malesia, Peru, the USA and Great Britain, five of whom received financial assistance provided through the State Office for Croats Abroad.
The latest round of the HiT-1 online Croatian as a foreign language course saw its successful conclusion on 29 November with the participants taking the final exam. This autumn semester was attended by sixteen participants from Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Hong Kong, Croatia, Malesia, Peru, the United States of America and Great Britain, five of whom received financial assistance provided through the State Office for Croats Abroad.
The HiT-1 course is staged twice a year in spring and autumn semesters and consists of seven instructional units that participants are required to master over a twelve-week period. In this they are ably assisted by accomplished instructors specialised in teaching Croatian as a foreign language Marija Bošnjak, Maša Musulin and Zrinka Kolaković. The course is conducted as an e-learning system and includes twenty-four hours of mandatory online instruction using the Skype online telecommunications application, with participants able to work directly with the e-instructors, all native speakers of Croatian. It is the live online sessions and the fascinating and diverse content in the e-system used by the participants in their independent work that make this course special and unique. To date the course has seen twenty-one semesters, with instructions provided for 226 participants from forty-nine countries around the world.
In their final evaluations the participants highlighted the fascinating and diverse content in the e-system, the professional, open and helpful attitude of the e-instructors, and, above all, the live online sessions that provide for an individualised approach and adaptation of the content to the needs and aptitude of every individual. The novel circumstances produced by the pandemic scare related to the coronavirus, with restrictive official measures significantly impairing the conduct of activities in their normal form at institutions of education, has further underpinned the facility and current precedence of this form of instruction.
The programme began back in 2008 when the Croatian Heritage Foundation, working with the University of Zagreb and its SRCE computing centre, and with the support of the science and education ministry, gave the initiative for the creation of the first ever Internet course teaching Croatian as a foreign language. The HiT-1 programme began operations in March of 2011. The value of the HiT course was later recognised by the State Office for Croats Abroad, which has since 2015 supported the course through state funding on a per-semester basis for participants.
The organisers have announced the upcoming 2021 courses: the spring course will be staged from 8 March to 30 May 2021 (with application submissions accepted through to 26 February 2021), with an autumn course to be held from 13 September to 5 December 2021 (with application submissions accepted through to 3 September 2021). More detailed information can be found on the Internet at the address: https://matis.hr/programi/hit-9-ozujka-31-svibnja-2020/. For information regarding possible financial assistant (scholarships) please contact us at: tecaj-hrvatskog-jezika@hrvatiizvanrh.hr.
By: Lada Kanajet Šimić