The author provides an overview of the major changes that took place in American and Canadian Ukrainain Studies in the period from 1991 to 2003. She concentrates on the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (the two major centers in North America), their journals, research and relations with independent Ukraine. The author summarizes several recent publications on history and literature, reviews some of the main trends and presents bibliographical information on new publications in these fields in North America. Finally, the author points out some areas of inquiry that have rightly received the attention of specialists in Ukrainian Studies, notably the multi-faceted issue of Ukrainian-Russian relations, and expresses the hope that Russian Studies experts will also enlarge their focus to include this issue, which is quite important for a fuller understanding of Russia as well as Ukraine.

This contribution analyses the current state of teaching Czech as a foreign language in the Italian universities. The universities have resolved to apply the standards of the Common European Framework of Reference to teaching Czech as they have already done for the principal European languages. According to the research done by the author at La Sapienza University in Rome the results reached in Czech do not differ substantially from those reached in the four major languages (English, French, Spanish and German). The results reached during the first two years are similar whereas in the third year there appear to be delays in the syllabus of the Czech language: level C is reached in reading, like in the major languages, but not in writing (B2). Therefore the general level in Czech can be valued as B2.2 at the end of the three-year period. A new system of international examinations and certification is being prepared regarding the Czech language. This system is based on the definite standards of the SJZ (State Language Examination), a diploma issued by organisations accredited by the Ministry of National Education of the Czech Republic. In teaching the Slavic Languages in the Italian universities standards of the European Union should be followed, as well as those of the international certification. Besides, it is necessary to reconsider the syllabi and the number of lessons needed to reach the objectives.

This paper examines the role of Slavic linguistics today as well as the relationships between Slavic linguistics and general linguistics. It takes into consideration some recent changes in the field of Slavic linguistics since the end of the Slavic world’s isolation in 1989. The paper deals with three issues of interest regarding general theory: evidence offered by the structure of Slavic languages for the anthropocentric theory of language, the grammaticalization of the verbal aspect, and the functioning of the Balkan linguistic league, which includes two South Slavic Languages as Bulgarian and Macedonian, as a typology laboratory. The paper concludes with some reflections on the relationships between linguistic pragmatics and Slavic linguistics as well as between cognitive linguistics and Slavic linguistics.

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