About centre

The Masaryk University Language Centre / Centrum jazykového vzdělávání (CJV MU)

is the largest language centre in the country. It was established in 1971. Its mission is to encourage intellectual and personality growth of students, academics and university staff, increase their international mobility and improve their position in the global labour market by providing language- and communication-related assistance. It supports international cooperation and intensive exchange of knowledge, ideas and information on a worldwide scale.

CJV MU offers language services and support for personal, professional and academic purposes to prospective and current students, to staff of all ten faculties of Masaryk University and to members of the wider public. Its flexible language courses, material development and assessment formats focus on languages for academic and specific purposes at A1-C1 CEFR levels (the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) and on languages for general purposes, language and communication soft skills at all CEFR levels. CJV MU promotes innovation and modern technologies in language education, contributes significantly to internationalization of the university life, and participates in the creation and sharing of good pedagogical practice and research. Its teaching, project and research activities help to build and expands an extensive network of national and international teams and strategic partnerships.

Who we are

• Expanding portfolio of languages taught
• Focus on students, university staff and general public
• Original research and project activities
• Organisation of summer schools, intensive courses and specialised seminars and workshops
• Language counselling services
• Professional translations, proofreading and editing of texts

Research activities

CJV MU academic staff members perceive research as an integral and meaningful part of language education, as a cornerstone of high-quality teaching and a means to their personal development and professional growth.

Research style

Principles of communities of practice

Research forms

Action research, exploratory practice, teacher research

Research areas

• Plurilingualism: development of plurilingual and pluricultural competence, intercomprehension, metalinguistic awareness
• Languages in contact, language acquisition and attrition
• Affective dimension of language learning: emotions, motivation and autonomy
• Applied corpus linguistics - use of corpora in the L2 teaching and learning
• Mediation skills
• Use of e-learning tools for the development of academic writing
• Acquisition strategy and the methodology of vocabulary building
• Development of creativity in the environment of foreign language learning
• CLIL method in academic environment

Pedagogical activities

CJV MU experts use modern teaching methods and high-quality resources. They excel in the following areas:

• Languages for academic and specific purposes
• Academic writing
• Presentation skills
• Employability, intercultural and communication skills
• E-learning, on-line learning, blended learning, videoconferencing
• Peer review and feedback skills
• Autonomous, collaborative and project teaching
• CLIL and EMI
• Language training for non-academics
• Language skills assessment