This article shares some practical experience of teaching English to students of archaeology and theology at the University of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. Drawing on this experience, a case is made for actively employing translation as a language-teaching tool in an academic setting. A number of effective teaching strategies are suggested aimed at extending the students’ knowledge of the specialised English vocabulary (terminology) of their chosen discipline; sensitizing them to the concept of collocation as a key factor in producing natural sounding speech and writing; students becoming aware of the crucial importance of context when working with (English) texts; gaining confidence in identifying and using complex grammatical structures as they work with authentic material; mastering their speaking skills with plenty of opportunity to debate and deliver talks on topics covered in the texts set for translation; and, finally, students developing essential translation skills, as translation, far from being a relic of the past, is one of the most important and relevant practical applications of foreign language competence.

This paper presents the multilingual website mluvtecesky.net, currently available in ten language versions: Czech, Arabic, Chinese, English, German, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak and Spanish. The website offers an online course of general language Czech consisting of 30 units (levels A1 and A2) as well as a detailed course of medical Czech, which has been reviewed by medical experts. This innovative language course contains 37 units and is divided into three main modules: Internal Propaedeutics, Internal Medicine and Further Clinical Departments. Completely new interactive materials are accompanied by over seven hours of audio recordings, a useful dictionary, a grammar summary, a discussion forum, and invaluable information about the Czech Republic (culture, history, and geography). The website was developed primarily for healthcare professionals who need to use Czech in their professional life. However, it has become an integral part of teaching Czech to foreign medical students at Masaryk University. The website is user-friendly and free of charge.

The aim of this text is to discuss the possibilities of making students’ natural listening habits more beneficial for their language learning. The article reflects on difficulties with listening that students themselves identify and tries to provide an insight into their practices by referring to the concepts of autonomous learning. It will be suggested that it is the lack of learning awareness and metacognitive skills that prevents students from developing their listening skills. The text also includes suggestions for practical activities that may contribute to developing these skills in class and which allow students to use them outside of the classroom itself.

University students at an advanced or proficiency level of English can benefit greatly from exposure to a kind of instruction which not only offers more variety and deeper involvement in terms of reading and writing skills development but also taps into students’ own creative and critical potential of interpreting an authentic text. I have tried to achieve this through a more extensive reading practice programme, which can be implemented with an eager class as part of regular general English university classes. I have created a lesson plan based on The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, which was the starting point in my attempt to develop extensive reading.

The workshop presented here is based on techniques used in different classes. It has been designed to give an overview of different activities that have been conducted several times in different groups to try and address the issue of helping students acquire transferrable problem-solving skills and autonomy when working in large groups.

Nowadays many university students spend much of their time using various media, and learning a foreign language should reflect their reality, therefore, a modern classroom should be equipped to fit and accommodate their needs and teachers should be up to date with technology to be able to keep their students involved and interested in the course content. Using YouTube in the classroom is one of the simplest ways of facilitating these needs and as, e.g., teaching grammar may be challenging, incorporating tasks including interesting YouTube videos might make challenging aspects of grammar more palatable and easier to understand as well as to teach. This article presents a variety of engaging and ready-to-use grammar and vocabulary tasks, which can very easily be modified and adapted to the needs of different groups of students. To make lessons attractive and effective, teachers should build them around their students’ interests and using YouTube is the perfect way to achieve this.