Abstract:

Slovak people have emigrated to Great Britain and countries all over the world since time immemorial and nowadays when Slovakia joined the European Union in 2004, hundreds of thousands of Slovaks began to emigrate to Western European countries. From the beginning, they travelled for work individually, but later whole families emigrated. Slovak people also began to build multicultural families, which realized the importance of language education and also to keep their national and cultural identity. It is very important if they decide to travel back to Slovakia and connect with their families. It is also a basic need for the preservation of their culture for future generations.

From the need to learn the mother tongue, Slovaks living abroad established educational centres. Their basic task is to teach Slovak children in Slovak language and cultural studies, so they can return back to Slovakia and can participate in the same educational process, at the same level, as their peers. However these children have a special position in education, because they also graduate in a school, in country abroad. A number of them originate from a bilingual environment and their main language in education is English, French, German or other languages. So that is the reason, why these children need special support, educational material and encouragement from Slovak institutions.

The educational centres built in Western European countries receive support from Slovak government organizations and especially from Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. The Faculty of Education at Matej Bel´s University drafted projects to address this situation and prepared educational material and support for teachers in these centres, especially for children in primary school education.

In this article we characterise the bilingual environment of Slovak children living abroad and the educational support prepared for these children. We also characterise material and actual research in new project KEGA No. 019UMB-4/2020 Preparation of interactive environment Landscape Hláskovo to support the teaching of Slovak language for Slovaks living abroad. This project is established to preserve language skills and prepare support for the education of bilingual children by preparing multimedia learning environment.

Keywords:

Education, bilingualism, bilingual environment, Slovak language, education support, multimedia.