HiT-1 Winds Up Another Successful Autumn Session

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The autumn semester was attended by 21 participants from Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia/Croatia, Northern Ireland, Canada, Germany, the United States of America, Ukraine/Croatia, four 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, which opened on 13 September, wrapped up on 5 December with the participants taking the final exam. This autumn semester was attended by 21 participants from Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Indonesia/Croatia, Northern Ireland, Canada, Germany, the United States of America, and Ukraine/Croatia, four 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-two semesters. This round was notable for the family atmosphere: with participants including a brother and sister from Canada and two brothers from the United States of America.

In the novel situation engendered by coronavirus-related measures—with education institutions hindered to a significant extent in conducting their activities in normal form—this type of instruction has been presented as having an unprecedented advantage. 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 2022 courses: the spring course will be staged from 7 March to 29 May 2022 (with application submissions accepted through to 25 February 2022), with an autumn course to be held from 12 September to 4 December 2022 (with application submissions accepted through to 2 September 2022).

More detailed information can be found on the Internet at the address below.

https://matis.hr/programi/hrvatski-internetski-tecaj-hit-1/

For information regarding possible financial assistant (scholarships) please contact us at the email address below.

tecaj-hrvatskog-jezika@hrvatiizvanrh.hr

 

By: Lada Kanajet Šimić

 

 

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