As many as 103 foreign students enrolled at Vilnius University Kaunas Faculty in 2024, coming from more than 15 countries: Ghana, Bangladesh, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Nigeria, India, Ukraine, etc. First-year Bachelor's and Master's students enrolled in 2024-2025 were given the opportunity to study Lithuanian for free during the autumn semester. The students were taught Lithuanian by three teachers: Assoc. Prof. Audronė Rimkutė, J. Assist. Monika Stankienė and Lect. Indrė Bagdžiūtė. Those who successfully completed the course were awarded Lithuanian language A1.1 level certificates. The students say that the Lithuanian language courses have significantly improved their integration and experience in the country.
A course to get to know the language and culture
“This optional course is designed to help students learn how to communicate in Lithuanian about commonly known subjects in everyday situations. We think it is important to understand the language at least a little when you come to study in Lithuania. I am delighted that students are realising this and choosing the subject,” says the teacher Assoc. Prof. Audronė Rimkutė.
She notes that students with more language skills feel more comfortable in new environments, accept cultural differences more easily, and are more eager to attempt to communicate with native speakers. The Associate Professor strives to make the learning process dynamic and engaging, using active learning (dialogues, situations, pair work, group tasks) and communicative methods (exercises).
The course teaches to read and understand short, simple, informative texts and expressions related to basic needs (language, country, family, studies, place of residence), to ask for or give information, and even to write simple texts and messages as well as to fill in personal details and provide information about oneself in questionnaires and official documents.
Students enjoy new experiences
“I am grateful for the opportunity. I chose the Lithuanian language course to help me integrate into the system, and communicating with people in my day-to-day life would be easier for me with the background in the course,” says Denteh Rejoice from Ghana. He is pleased that the expectations have been met. The student was most surprised by the suffixes of the Lithuanian language (changing with case, conjugation, gender, number, or tense), which made learning difficult.
“It was an honour to participate in the Lithuanian language course. It was a wonderful experience,” says Sandra Minojare Adeoye from Nigeria.
“I chose a Lithuanian language course to learn new skills. The knowledge I have acquired is already helping me to communicate with the locals. This was a bit of a surprise for me because my mother tongue is Bengali, a completely different language. The hardest part for me was the pronunciation and grammar, but I was happy that the letters were already familiar, as seen in English. It was very interesting and helped us to understand the Lithuanian language faster,” says Md Firojul Islam from Bangladesh.
“This basic Lithuanian language course helped me to understand basic Lithuanian words, numbers, and sentences. I speak a little Lithuanian when I meet the locals, which I learned from the course. They get excited and encourage me to keep learning,“ says Muhammad Hamza, a first-year student of the Information Systems and Cyber Security study programme, who came from Pakistan. He is very pleased with the lecturers' work and the Faculty community's support. Muhammad Hamza hopes that similar courses will also be provided in the future since learning new languages broadens horizons and helps to learn more about the culture of the people who speak them.
“I was initially intimidated by Lithuanian's reputation as one of Europe's oldest living languages and its complex grammar. However, the course was structured in such an approachable way that I found myself slowly grasping the basics,“ says Muhammad Saleh, a first-year student of the Information Systems and Cyber Security study programme, who also came from Pakistan. He is glad that learning the basics of the language helped him interact with the local community and assures that the pleasant surprise on people's faces when he attempted to speak Lithuanian made every challenging grammar lesson worth it.
“I would say that learning Lithuanian is a good idea for those who want to communicate with elderly citizens who don't know English or for those planning to become Lithuanian citizens themselves,“ says Oleh Protsenko from Ukraine. He notices that Lithuanians with little sympathy for foreigners often start speaking to them in Lithuanian and even gossiping. The desire to understand this also motivates him to learn the language while living in Lithuania.
According to him, knowing some basic words (such as the names of products) definitely helps out in daily life. The student is convinced that learning how to ask "Do you speak English?" in Lithuanian definitely was the most helpful part of this course.
The results are obvious
“When the students started to learn Lithuanian, I asked them to remember that initial moment when they all came without knowing anything. I captured that moment, too. It was clear that the students felt a bit confused. Everything seemed quite complicated and perplexing. At the end of the course, when I asked them to look back on the first days and note their progress, they noted that they were more confident and certainly felt more confident and relaxed because they had learned a lot,” says Monika Stankienė.
She is pleased to see that, after the first lecture, students who only knew how to say hello and goodbye by the end of the course could not only understand the questions she asked but also answer them in Lithuanian. From the students' feedback, the lecturer realised that they benefited from learning the basics of the Lithuanian language and that the language learning process helped them understand Lithuanians and their culture better. A large number of students said they wanted to continue the course.
“It was a pleasant surprise that even before starting this course, the students were already actively interested in Lithuanian culture and traditions, and they had already started to create a list of places to go and things to do in different Lithuanian cities after finding Lithuanian pen pals on the Internet. The students were happy to share their experiences of using the Lithuanian language outside the course and kept wondering how to say various phrases,” says one of the course lecturers, Indrė Bagdžiūtė.
She noted that the students were keen to discuss various everyday issues in Lithuania, such as kindergartens, and to compare the situation with that in El Salvador, India, and Pakistan. Of course, these comparisons were initially made in English, but discussions on cultural issues have increased over time. I. Bagdžiūtė is most pleased that the students were learning the difficult Lithuanian language with enthusiasm and curiosity and comparing it with other languages they speak.