Course description
With courses ranging from an intensive one-to-one Slovak language course at our London training centre to an in-company Slovak course at your offices, Communicaid is uniquely placed to meet your Slovak training course needs. With training centres in London, Paris, Frankfurt and New York providing countrywide coverage and partner organisations worldwide, Communicaid is ideally placed to be your local, national and international training partner for Slovak courses.
Our Slovak courses are highly individualised and developed to improve your Slovak communication and language skills, whether your focus is social, business, financial, diplomatic or military.
Benefits of our Slovak language course
A Communicaid Slovak language course will provide you with the ability to:
- Speak Slovak fluently and accurately
- Interact more confidently when visiting Slovak-speaking regions or dealing with Slovak
speakers
- Build rapport and strengthen relationships with Slovak-speaking colleagues and clients
through a show of interest in the Slovak language and culture
- Demonstrate goodwill and facilitate international communication at both a personal and
organisational level
Who should attend our Slovak school
A Communicaid Slovak language training course is suitable for:
- Anyone doing business with the Slovak Republic
- Business professionals conducting business regularly with Slovak speakers who wish to build
rapport and strengthen relationships by attending a Slovak course
- Anyone planning to relocate to a Slovak-speaking region and wishing to attend a Slovak
course in order to prepare in advance for their assignment
- Government and non-governmental agency representatives working in Slovak-speaking
regions who need to be able to communicate at all levels
Slovak course content
The content and format of your Slovak training course will depend on your profession, proficiency in Slovak and objectives. Whether beginner, survival, intermediate or advanced, key areas covered in all our Slovak courses include:
- Spoken fluency
- Listening skills
- Pronunciation and accent
- Reading skills
- Telephone skills in Slovak
- Email skills in Slovak
- Sector-specific terminology
- Presentation & negotiation skills
Approach
Slovak language training is available seven days a week, 365 days a year. Training takes place between 08:00 and 20:00 although training is also available outside of these hours upon request.
Suitable tailored and published materials will be used throughout your course, with recommendations on self-study material and extra reading made at the beginning and throughout the duration of your course.
We offer a variety of training formats for your Slovak language course – from intensive, weeklong courses to extensive, modular lessons. Appropriate formats will be discussed during your diagnostic consultancy (please click here to read more about our approach).
Slovak course trainer
All Communicaid Slovak trainers are native speakers with at least 3 years’ professional Slovak training experience. In addition to relevant academic and linguistic qualifications and experience, many of our Slovak trainers also possess considerable exposure and expertise in the professional world.
Your Slovak trainer will be assigned to you following the results of your diagnostic consultancy according to your objectives and areas of focus. Detailed below is a sample profile of a member of our Slovak training team.
OW
OW relocated to the UK in 1993, and has since worked as a professional translator, interpreter and trainer on a freelance basis. In addition to delivering Czech and Slovak courses at the Universities of Oxford and London, OM has delivered Slovak courses to a wide range of personnel for a number of Communicaid’s government department clients.
From 1981 to 1993, OW was the in-house instructor of Slovak as a foreign language to students at the Academy of Fine Art and at the Academy of Music in Bratislava, Slovakia. OW’s duties also stretched to teaching Italian to students attending the Faculty of Music. In addition to language training, OW was also responsible for international cultural exchanges in the fields of art and ethnography for the Ministry of Culture and worked for Slovak television in Bratislava, translating films and programmes from Italian, French and English into Slovak.
Slovencina – Facts about the Slovak language
Slovak, also occasionally known as Slovakian, is the official language of Slovakia and the independent province of Vojvodina of North Serbia. It is estimated that there are over 6 million Slovak speakers worldwide. Slovakia, which accounts for 5 million of these speakers, is joined by the Czech Republic, Serbia, Romania and Poland all of which retain indigenous populations of Slovak speakers. Large numbers of emigrants has also meant that countries such as the United States and Canada are populated with sizeable Slovak speaking communities.
Slovak belongs to the West Slavic group of the Indo-European family of languages. Its closest relation is Czech but it also shares parallels with Polish and Sorbian.
Slovak consists of a number of dialects which can be broadly categorised into three main groups: Eastern Slovak dialects (in Spis, Saris, Zemplin and Abov), Central Slovak dialects (in Liptov, Orava, Turiec, Tekov, Hont, Novohrad, Gemer and the historic Zvolen county) and Western Slovak dialects (in remaining Slovakia).
Slovak is written using a modified Latin alphabet that employs 4 diacritics: the acute mark (´), the caron (?), the circumflex (ˆ) and the diaeresis (¨).
