Pyongyang University of Architecture is channelling efforts into raising the level of education of multilingual students.

True to the decision of the Ninth Plenary Meeting of the Eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea on bringing about a radical improvement in education in the new era, the university is working to train multilingual technical personnel.

“Communication skills are one of major criteria for assessing talents along with creative and information processing abilities. In line with our characteristics as a technical school, we are conducting education work as we focus on making students master several languages needed for becoming proficient in everyday conversation and possessing special sci-tech knowledge,” said Chae Kum San, lecturer of the English department.

The university attaches importance to creating a model to be copied.

“A model is, in other words, a goal. As the saying goes, ‘Seeing is believing.’ An exemplary student gives many others self-confidence and implants in them a competitive spirit,” said Pak Jae Won, chief of the instruction section of the university.

The university chooses the students who are deeply interested in learning foreign languages and advanced in them to give them education and sets them as models on different occasions, and the result is said to be very positive.

It organizes multilingual presentations, ability assessments and contests of such excellent students in order to encourage all others to study harder for attaining higher goals.

Every student is studying hard to master two or three foreign languages, leading to an increase in the number of polyglots.

“It is true that 1% of talents and 99% of efforts make a genius. When effective methods are adopted, it will turn out better results,” Chae said.

Amid purposeful efforts to innovate teaching methods, the university prioritizes a method of learning foreign languages based on imitation.

It is of crucial importance in studying them to practise pronunciation, gain linguistic sense and get familiar with diction.

In this stage students are said to correct their previous mistakes in pronunciation and grammar.

Study should be pursued purposefully and consciously, not blindly.

The university applies reasonable methods to make those who have passed through the imitation stage acquire the ability of systematization and deduction and the logical thinking ability.

It also closely combines education in major subjects with that in foreign languages to get students ready to solve problems that would arise in practice in the future.

A typical example is a multilingual sci-tech presentation.

As they prepare for the presentation, students work to master technical terms and relevant linguistic skills and practise even gesture and facial expression so as to get through to the audience.

According to Chae, the university was highly appreciated at the National Multilingual Contest of University Students-2023 last year and 13 students including Kim Jin Sang who speaks five languages received commendations, and many other students are now studying hard to surpass them.