A ceremony for awarding international students the certificates on completion of the Russian Language Course was held at South Ural State University. This supplementary education course was provided by the Pushkin Institute Research, Education and Coordination Centre of the SUSU Institute of Linguistics and International Communications.
The Russian language course for international students was held throughout the 2018-2019 academic year, from October through May. The students of the program included Chinese students studying in SUSU’s various schools and institutes. This supplementary education program allows students in different fields to improve their knowledge of the Russian language.
“This year we had many truly interested students who were motivated to work. Students of the Master's programs taught in English have Russian in their academic plan, but a limited number of hours – the main portion of the work is dedicated to their specialized courses. But many of them decided to attend the supplementary education course and improve their mastery of Russian,” said Head of the SUSU Pushkin Institute Centre, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian as a Foreign Language Yadviga Berezovskaya.
This year, a couple dozen students took the opportunity to improve their knowledge of the Russian language. Four groups were formed. Students of the program included students from the Yellow River Conservancy Technical Institute in the Double Degree course completing their third year of education at the SUSU Institute of Architecture and Construction, as well as Master’s students of the Master’s programs taught in English from the School of Economics and Management and the Institute of Engineering and Technology. The course was taught by highly-qualified specialists in Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language.
“We have experience in working with international students from very different countries, which allows us to very easily form an efficient channel of communication. The students of the main academic programs came to us with no knowledge of the language or were at the Breakthrough level, and they all achieved success and earned their certificates today. I wish that the graduates of the course focus on their studies of the Russian language. They had a very successful beginning to this process, and now they have a foundation to continue their studies,” noted Irina Chunosova, senior lecturer of the RFL Department.
During the awarding ceremony, the course’s teachers noted the students’ achievements. A couple of students demonstrated excellent results on the TruD test for non-Russian speakers as part of the Total Dictation event and earned 97 and 99 points. Many Chinese speakers work towards speaking Russian fluently and actively practice by speaking with staff of the university and with other students.
“I like studying Russian. It is difficult, but very interesting. This allows me to travel around Russia and freely speak with other people. I already visited Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities in the Chelyabinsk Region. I want to see more. I am thinking of continuing to study Russian at SUSU,” said student of the Institute of Architecture and Construction Zhang Pu.
Some of the students are planning on continuing their studies of the Russian language to obtain a qualification as a Russian as a Foreign Language teacher in the future.