The Department for Language Teaching and International Students at “St. Kliment Ohridski” University, Sofia, is a successor of the former Institute for Foreign Students.
The main activities of the department include:
- offering a foundation year for foreign students
- organizing courses in Bulgarian as a foreign language at The International School for Bulgarian Language and Culture
- organizing foreign language courses
- offering Bulgarian and mathematics courses for high school and university candidates
During the foundation year, foreign students are taught Bulgarian and English as well as science, mathematics, geography, and economics. The Department has adopted the vitally important role to disseminate the Bulgarian language and culture around the world, which in turn would facilitate the country’s integration within the multicultural European context. DLTIS works to harmonize the educational standards of teaching Bulgarian as a foreign language with the ones applied in teaching other languages, especially the standards, developed by The Council of Europe. As a result, The Department has become Bulgaria’s only educational institution to be granted membership in the Association of the European Language Testing Centres (ALTE). DLTIS carries out examinations for proficiency in Bulgarian as a foreign language and issues the respective certificates. There are no fixed examination sessions. Examinees normally take the test individually, at a time which suits them best, in front of a panel of two examiners.
We currently teach Bulgarian to people who temporarily reside in the country or to Bulgarian citizenship candidates in specialized courses, at the International School for Bulgarian Language and Culture and in a variety of workshops.
Since 1976, as part of the educational institution, a Centre for Foreign Language Teaching has been in place, where Bulgarian citizens receive tuition in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish, and Russian.
The Department is a licensed national testing centre for the following languages:
· French: TCF, CENTRE INTERNATIONAL D’ETUDES PEDAGOGIQUES with The French Ministry of Education
· Greek: CENTRE FOR THE GREEK LANGUAGE (KEG) with The Ministry of Education of The Republic of Greece
· Russian: STATE TESTING CENTRE FOR FOREIGNERS with The Ministry of Education of The Russian Federation.
For the above-mentioned tests, we offer licensed preparatory courses, as well as preparatory courses for FCE, CAE, CPE, D.E.L.E. INTERMEDIO, DaF, CELI.
At DLTIS we constantly modernize our foreign language teaching methods and resources. The Department is equipped with four computer multimedia labs, science labs, and a library. There is a bookshop on the premises, which offers all the necessary textbooks and teaching materials.