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“НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЧЕРВЕНЬ 201 3 WWW. UNWLA.ORG 23 LANGUAGE EDUCATION, WRITING, AND CULTURAL VALUES IN UKRAINE AND THE UNITED STATES An Interview with Olexandra Kostenko Just twenty years ago most students in Ukraine could hardly dream about enhancing their education in the United States or elsewhere in the West. Today spending a few years studying in an English - speaking country is both a desirable and an entirely possible experience, which not only significantly improves one's spoken and written English, but also imparts a broad, cross - cultural perspective on any number of things, including education. On my recent visit to the University of Ill i- nois, I met with a graduate student w ho hails from the opposite end of Ukraine, but happens to share my educational background in English, my interest in teaching language, and even my name (Oleksandra). Over coffee, Olexandra and I compared studies in Ukraine and the United States a nd talked about language education — including about how it reflects different mindsets and cultural values. Olexandro, what and where did you study in Ukraine, and what brought you to the United States? In Ukraine, I studied the English language and literature at the Oles’ Honchar National Univers i- ty in Dnipropetrovsk. After graduating, I stayed on to teach English at this institution and found it to be a challenging experience. I realized that many of my students were only slight ly below me in their level of English, and I knew that I could truly benefit from exposure to an authentic En g- lish - language environment. So I decided to pu r- sue a teaching degree in the United States. I a p- plied to the Fulbright Program, which is an ac a- demic exchange program that operates worl d- wide. It took me three years of applying to finally receive the scholarship, but I was encouraged by the fact that a good friend of mine was able to get this grant the very first year. So I pushed hard and finally succe eded. I came to the United States in 2011, and the Fulbright Program placed me at the Univers i- ty of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign. Only with time was I fully able to appreciate their choice of university for me. This institution’s MA program in Teaching E nglish as a Second Language, in which I enrolled, is very strong, and I soon di s- covered that several of my professors are well - known and respected scholars in the field of s e- cond language acquisition. So this has been an extremely beneficial educational ex perience for me. Olexandr a Kostenko graduates with an MA in Teaching Eng lish as a Foreign Language from the University of Illinois, Urbana - Champaign. _______________________________ I know that as part of this program, you wro te a very interesting MA thesis . Could you please describe this project and e x- plain the rationale behind it? As a teaching assistant at the University of Ill i- nois, I taught the principles of academic writing to foreign students. During my studies in Ukraine, I never had a course in academic writing myself, which is unfortunate because the ability to write clearly and persuasively is such a vital skill. So I decided to utilize this teaching experience in my Master’s project and compare the principles of academic writing, in particu lar the writing of a r- gumentative essays, in the United States and in Ukraine. As you know, in Ukraine high school graduates are required to take an exam in the Ukrainian language and literature as one of se v- eral external evaluation tests. An important part of this exam is writing an argumentative essay. As I noticed, however, the expectations and guid e lines for these essays are very different from the academic writing standards in the United States. Compared with American academic wri t- ing, which is very st raightforward and clear, wri t- ing in Ukraine is often more vague and philosop h- ical. I decided to see if I could adapt some of the principles of testing academic writing in the US — for example, from the English placement test
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