On February 27th the Institute of the Russian Language is holding a meeting with experts in the sphere of education in a foreign country at the official office of Russia at the UN in Geneva. 150 experts from 23 countries will discuss a new format of teaching Russian with use of modern technologies and an educational portal in Russian. The Vice-Rector for Science, Mikhail Osadchy, said that teaching of Russian as a foreign language, i.e. language export, is not possible without spreading, developing, strengthening and preserving the study of the Russian language in Russia as a native language. “In linguistics, everything is the same as in the economy. If there is no domestic production, then there is nothing to export. In 2000 we started thinking about the creation of a technology of Russian language teaching as a native language for such a special category of people as bilingual children for whom Russian is their second or first native language along with another language in the family. These children are a special audience, special technology needs to be applied to them, which we are working on now.”
The Russian language is one of the major languages, and the language is beginning to vary. “English has dissolved, dispersed into such variants which are not similar phonetically, lexically or grammatically. In fact, exactly the same is happening with the Russian language. The Russian language in the CIS countries slightly differs from the Russian language in Russia: pronunciations are different, and vocabulary is different, some grammar is slightly different. So we started thinking about how we can ensure the overall standardization of Russian language teaching in the world as a second and as a foreign language, as a native language and a second language for a bilingual,” Osadchy says.
According to him, the problem of providing Russian schools with textbooks, timely provision of libraries with literature in Russian will probably always be insurmountable and intractable. “There will always be barriers of cost, transport, logistics, etc. The only tool to solve this problem in the very beginning is the development of modern communication technologies, the development of e-learning, in the online mode, with a constant presence to ensure those who are studying the Russian language do so with modern materials, modern developments.”
For this reason, the Institute of the Russian Language has started to develop a project, a portal of education in Russian, which is just a developmental learning environment for all those who are interested in Russian, who want to get an education in Russian: “Now we are entering a new phase of the project, the final stage: the development of the educational platform itself, we are beginning to implement it throughout the work of the centers for the study of the Russian language, but also by introducing it in the educational systems of other countries,” Osadchy said.
He assumes that at the Geneva forum they will hear criticism of the new project: “Many foreign language teachers continue to believe that a language cannot be taught via the Internet. Still, the best way of studying a language is either a mother or a live teacher. But we probably need to take the best from any innovation. Surely the Internet, remote forms of learning and transmission of information have their advantages, which in combination with traditional methods can bring great benefit. We must now do everything possible to preserve the motivation for the preservation of the Russian language for bilingual children, the children of our compatriots living abroad. This is our very important political, national objective.”
