Total Dictation in Russian at ASU

Astrakhan State University is traditionally the largest site in Astrakhan to host the Total Dictation. Over 270 people have decided to check their knowledge of Russian this year. The range of participants has included students and staff of our University, as well as students of local secondary schools and colleges and their parents. “We’re glad to see more and more people participating in this event, their respectful attitudes towards Russian and their interest in checking their language skills”, this is what Prof. Lyudmila Kasyanova, Dean of ASU’s Department of Philology & Journalism, has remarked. The large number of participants is also due to large-scale preparation activities; in particular, the Department of Philology & Journalism arranged the two-month event “Russian Every Saturday” that encouraged everyone to take part in it.

An artistic text by Evgeny Vodolazkin, the well-known Russian modern writer, has been used for the dictation. As many participants confess, the text was really uneasy; they had to think it over carefully and reflect it in earnest. Videos and presentations prepared by the event organizers have helped the participants reduce their agitation, which is natural for such situations.

After the dictation, its participants argued for quite a long time how this or that word must be spelt or how to arrange punctuation marks in this or that sentence. They have expressed their gratitude to the event organizers for such a good opportunity to assess the level of their literacy objectively.

Russian original information source: Dmitriy Bychkov (the Press Service of ASU)

Russian original photo source: Tatyana Vorontsova (the TV Media Center of ASU)