Another expedition of the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute's volunteer program 'Russian Language Ambassadors in the World' is underway in Azerbaijan. The program coordinator, assistant professor of the Russian literature and intercultural communication department at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute Tatyana Kudoyarova told the correspondents of Vestnik Kavkaza about the goals and results of the Russian ambassadors's work.
First of all, the assistant professor spoke about how this program was created. "If we talk about the overall mission of the program, it originated more than three years ago in our institute, which is the leading institute in teaching Russian in the CIS countries. A special council was established at our institute to teach Russian in the CIS countries. We developed a volunteer program and since then we have been successfully implementing it with the money of various grants and subsidies with the support of the Russian Ministry of Education and other organizations," she said.
"The essence of the program is to unite initiative students of Russian and foreign universities primarily through the love for the Russian language and Russian culture and the desire to share them with other people. We travel primarily in the CIS countries, but our geography is expanding to foreign countries, where we we conduct interactive classes: participants either play or take part in various drama productions based on Russian fairy tales, we sing Russian songs, during this game they have to use Russian, which dismantles the language barrier," Tatiana Kudoyarova said.
"We work both in schools and in universities, at the moment we have a wide student audience in Azerbaijan. Despite the fact that these people are adults, they show a keen interest in the language. Our educators, in turn, get acquainted with Azerbaijani language, culture and history of the country. We visit museums and museum complexes," the coordinator of the 'Russian Language Ambassadors in the World'program" drew attention.
“Our ambassadors undergo a very serious selection. We check their understanding of our mission, their knowledge of Russian language, history and culture. Then we look at them in action: they present their fragments of lessons. Then they go on an expedition and test themselves in practice," she noted.
"For me, this program is important because Russian students return from any country with love to this country, which they might not have been able to feel if they only lived in their city and studied in their high school. The most important connections are made at the level of contacts between people," Tatyana Kudoyarova explained the purpose of the program.
"A person learns the language if he needs it in practical terms - work, study. You can receive a higher education in Russia. You can get a job in Russia. But there is another big incentive - our long-standing cultural past," Tatiana Kudoyarova said.
In Azerbaijan, the expedition has begun with the Azerbaijan University of Languages. "The department of Russian studies was opened in this institute a year ago. A general program is being studied for studying the epics of our peoples, which should cover both students and teachers. The first set of students worked with the Russian language ambassadors in September and now continue their studies. This university has become a home for the 'Russian Language Ambassadors in the World' program," the coordinator of the volunteer program concluded.
