On May 30, RIA Novosti hosted the press-conference ‘Promoting Russian abroad: new mechanisms and new people’.
It was dedicated to the launch of the joint project of Rossotrudnichestvo and Pushkin State Russian Language Institute titled ‘Master’s graduates as Teachers of Russian as a Foreign Language at International Russian Centers’.
The main objective of the project is to develop an easy and transparent selection procedure of best master’s degree graduates to be assigned for teaching in the countries interested in learning Russian. To do this, the contest ‘Masters of Russian language’ has been launched.
Margarita Rusetskaya, Rector of Pushkin Institute, said that ‘the contest comprises tests on Russian grammar and teaching Russian as a foreign language. The internship will be only part of graduates’ professional careers. We plan to use the contest to prepare a pool of competent teachers who can use modern technologies in their work.’
MCU Rector Igor Remorenko commented the following, ‘Russia needs a key agent responsible for academic mobility… Rossotrudnichestvo is quite fit for this part.’
Igor Remorenko agreed that the participants of the project can grow into tutors able to apply remote digital technologies for teaching. In this new professional area teachers only begin to use digital technologies to motivate students, present educational content and arrange discussions.
‘To train teachers to work in a digital environment is a whole new research task for us. I am glad that we have such tool, as master’s program of teaching Russian as a foreign language, to do this.
