Department of English and German Studies

Head of Department:

Ivana Marinić, Assistant Professor, Ph.D.

Name and surname	Ivana Marinić, Ph.D.
Position	Assistant professor
E-mail	imarinic@foozos.hr
Office	66
Research interests	figurative language and thought; acquisition of English as a foreign language
	Taught English in a primary school for ten years. Took interest in drama techniques in education, education of adults and children with behaviour issues, and education of children with special educational needs. Mentored trainee teachers and apprentice teachers of English. Published three drama plays for children in the current Croatian language textbook „Snaga riječi“ by Školska knjiga. Teaches English speaking practice and English language of early and pre-school education at the Faculty of Education in Osijek. Took part in the project of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek „The analysis of interference in translation of grammatical structures from English to Croatian in literature, media and marketing“. A member of the organising committee of the 8th international conference Children and Languages Today. A member of the Croatian Association of Applied Linguistics and the Croatian Association of Teachers of English. One of the authors of the English textbook Footsteps 1 by Školska knjiga.
List of publications (CROSBI link):	CROSBI Ivana Marinić

Members of Department:

Željka Flegar, Associate Professor, Ph.D.

Name and surname	Željka Flegar, Ph.D.
Position	Associate professor
E-mail	zflegar@foozos.hr
Research interests	English Language, Children's Literature, Children's Media Culture, Drama (Improvisational Theater)
	Željka (Nemet) Flegar, PhD, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Osijek, teaches courses and does research in children’s literature, media and drama in English. Her research deals with the intricacies and deviations of English language and literary discourse, more recently in the context of the historical development of children’s culture, adaptation, as well as with her theory on the “childlike language” of children’s literature. She has published papers in Croatia and abroad and is the author of the interdisciplinary book Theatrical Improvisation, Language and Communication (2016).
List of publications (CROSBI link):	CROSBI Željka Flegar

Mirna Erk, Assistant Professor, Ph.D.

Ivana Moritz, Assistant Professor, Ph.D.

Zvjezdana Penava Brekalo, Assistant Professor, Ph.D.

Ksenija Benčina, Senior English Language Instructor

Ivan Včev, Assistant

About the Department

The Department of English and German studies was established on October 1, 2019. The scientific and research interests of the members of the Department are in the field of language, literature, media culture, early learning and teaching of English and German. The teaching area of the Department's teachers includes linguistic, literary and methodical courses in English and German at all study programs of the Faculty of Education. The members of the Department participate in updating the existing and designing new courses in the mentioned fields, and have authored numerous papers in international journals, as well as participated in a number of scientific and professional conferences, and have been involved in several projects. It is necessary to point out numerous activities of the members of the Department in the field of popularization of science at the Science Festival.

The members of the Department of English and German Studies actively participate in the organization of the International Scientific Conference Child and Language Today, which is held every two years and is attended by scholars from the country and abroad, and results in domestic and foreign publications.

The Department has seven members.

The first HUPE Osijek branch meeting of the 2022-2023 school year

The first HUPE Osijek branch meeting of the 2022-2023 school year was held on December 3, 2022 at the Faculty of Education in Osijek. It is our pleasure to host such events, especially so when our own department members are among the speakers. This meeting’s speakers included our English language senior lector Ksenija Benčina (alongside School of Medicine colleague, Lorna Dubac Nemet).

Fulbright scholar at the Faculty of Education in Osijek

The English Language Studies Department at the University of Osijek is joined this year by Grace Penta from the University of Chicago. Grace is a Fulbright award recipient, selected by the Croatian Ministry and Science and Education and the United States government and placed in Osijek for nine months. She actively supports teaching at the university level, more precisely in English language classes in the 2022-2023 academic year, and has already joined the work of the American Corners office in Osijek. As a native speaker, she will gladly accept invitations from schools and other departments of the university for short visits as an ambassador of American culture and an English language resource. We are very pleased that Grace is with us this year. She can be contacted at gpenta@foozos.hr

Prof. JOANNA ROKITA-JAŚKOW, researcher from Poland, at the Faculty of Education in Osijek

Beginning in September of 2022, Osijek’s Faculty of Education hosted Prof. Joanna Rokita-Jaśkow of the Krakow Institute of English Studies as a guest researcher. As an expert in the field of applied linguistics, Prof. Joanna Rokita-Jaśkow’s work focuses primarily on topics related to the development of bilingualism, multilingualism, and foreign language acquisition. Prof. Rokita-Jaśkow’s prior connection to the Department of English and German Studies at the University of Osijek through Assistant Prof. Mirna Erk was highly influential in her choice of destination when awarded a research scholarship for excellence by her home university. During her two-month stay, Prof. Rokita-Jaśkow found time to both research and participate in the international Competent Systems in Early and Preschool Education conference, organized by the Faculty of Education, as well as in International Mobility Day at the University of Tuzla in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Name and suranme	Mirna Erk, Ph.D.
Position	Assistant Professor
E-mail	merk@foozos.hr
Office	61
Research interests	Second language acquisition, socio-cognitive approach to SLA, the age factor, language input and interaction.
	Mirna Erk completed her studies in English and German language and literature in Osijek (Faculty of Pedagogy, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek) in 1995. She received her doctoral degree at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, in 2013. Currently she works as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Education in Osijek (previously the Teacher Training College in Osijek, i.e., the Faculty of Teacher Education in Osijek). Prior to 2020, Mirna Erk worked as a lecturer (teaching-oriented track) and her professional work included writing area expert papers, training of foreign language teachers through teacher workshops, continuous professional development, and organizing summer schools and lectures by local and foreign experts on ELT (as a component of her work for the Croatian Association of English Teachers – Osijek branch). In October 2020, she switched to tenure-oriented track and now leads courses in Theories of Language Learning and Acquisition, Early English Language Learning, English Language Teaching and Teaching Practicum, and English for Specific Purposes. Fifteen graduate theses have been prepared under her mentorship. Dr. Erk has participated in four projects, including two international research projects. She presented at nearly thirty international conferences, three times as an invited speaker. She publishes research, review and area expert papers on topics related to the age factor in foreign language acquisition, and conditions that lead to high(er) levels of language proficiency for Croatian EFL learners, with an emphasis on external factors related to foreign language development.
List of publications (CROSBI link):	CROSBI Mirna Erk

Name and surname	Ivana Moritz, Ph.D.
Position	Assistant professor
E-mail	imoritz@foozos.hr, moritz.ivana@gmail.com
Office:	53
Research interests:	cognitive linguistics, English phraseology
	She completed primary and secondary school in Osijek. In 1999 she graduated from the Faculty of Pedagogy in Osijek acquiring the title of English and German language and literature teacher. In academic year 2006/2007 she enrolled in the Doctoral studies of Linguistics at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Osijek. She acquired her doctoral degree in philology in April 2015, defending the thesis titled Cognitive Analysis of Euphemism in Political Discourse in the English Language. She worked in different primary and secondary schools in Osijek as an English and German teacher, and spent a school year in Rydal Penrhos School in Colwyn Bay, Wales as an assistant at their EFL department. Since 2007 she has been working as an assistant and later a senior assistant at the Faculty of Education i Osijek. As a member of the Department of philology at the Faculty she has taught the following courses: English grammar 1, English Grammar 2, English language practice 3, and Englsih language 3. She has participated at numerous international scientific linguistics conferences, presenting papers in cognitive linguistics and Englsih phraseology, and has published papers from the same research fields in Croatian and foreign publications.
List of publications (CROSBI link):	CROSBI Ivana Moritz

Name and surname	Zvjezdana Penava Brekalo, Ph.D.
Position	Assistant professor
E-mail	zpenavabrekalo@foozos.hr
Research interests
	Zvjezdana Penava Brekalo graduated from the Faculty of Education in Osijek in 1990, becoming an English and German teacher. 1990-1995 she lived and worked in Vienna and during the Homeland War she was engaged at the Pädagogisches Institut der Stadt Wien, on the Project for the Admission and Integration of Refugee Children in the Vienna School System, functioning as a coordinator at preparing teaching materials for bilingual literacy classes, and later on she herself was teaching the bilingual literacy. Consequently, her Kommentar zum Lehrplan der Volkschule was published in Vienna, 1995. In the same year she moved to Toronto for further professonal and language experience. She returned to Croatia in 1998 and taught English and German at II. gimnazija Osijek till April 2020. Having been promoted to a teacher-advisor, from 2014 till 2020 she was the head of the County Council of English Teachers. 2002-2005 she had also taught German courses at the Teacher Training College. In 2008 she earned her master’s degree in Personal Marketing at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek. In 2012 she got her PhD from the Faculty of Economics and Tourism »Dr. Mijo Mirković », at Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, having defended her doctoral thesis titled The Conceptualization of Education for Personal Marketing in Higher Business Education. Since May 2020, she has been employed at the Faculty of Educational Sciences and she teaches the following courses: Integrated Teaching, Methodology of Education, Personal Marketing of Teachers, Action Research in Early and Preschool Education.
List of publications (CROSBI link):	CROSBI Zvjezdana Penava Brekalo

Name and surname	Ksenija Benčina
Position	Senior English language instructor
E-mail	kbencina@foozos.hr
Office	61
Research interests	Linguistics
	She has been employed at the Faculty of Education since 2008 and works as a senior English language instructor. She teaches the following courses: English language I, English language practice I, II and V and English speaking practice III and IV. In 2010, 2014 and 2016 she organized trips for the students of year 4 and 5 at to the UK. In 2017 she was a member of the Organising Committee of annual ATEE Conference (Association for Teacher Education Europe) Changing Perspectives and Approaches in Contemporary Teaching in Dubrovnik in October 2017. She is a PhD student of Linguistics at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek and a member of HUPE (Croatian Association of Teachers of English).
List of publications (CROSBI link):