Ural Federal University: Russian Language Teachers in Mongolia Ready for Retraining

More than 500 applications from teachers in Mongolia were received for participation in the “Creative Laboratories” project. An adapted methodology for teaching Russian as a foreign language, developed at Ural Federal University, will be introduced at the republic’s schools.

“Considering the needs of Mongolian russists, UrFU provides us with great opportunities. We planned to train a hundred people for individual districts of Mongolia, but half a thousand people have already registered, and the organizers have agreed to train all applicants,” says Tsewenyi Magsar, President of the Mongolian Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature.

Sergey Kortov, First Vice-Rector of the Ural Federal University, when announcing the project, which received funding from the Presidential Grants Fund, was open, noted the key role of the Russian language teachers in it. In his opinion, the success of the project is of great importance for the relations between Russia and Mongolia in various spheres: culture, science and education.

This is the third UrFU project for both Mongolian teachers and schoolchildren, applicants and students from Russian and Mongolian universities, notes Nikita Kutyavin, Director of the Sverdlovsk Regional Foundation for the Support of Youth Initiatives.

“We have experience with the summer international camp “Russian Language Test-Drive” during which Russian and Mongolian students combined Russian language learning with working life, as well as the linguistic camp “Cyrillic-Fest” and the Russian language marathon, which resulted in a digital platform where webinars, master classes and podcasts are the most popular,” says Nikita Kutyavin.

The developers of the methodology, Tatiana Rasskazova, Head of the Department of Foreign Languages and Educational Technologies at UrFU, and Professor Inna Krutko, Psychologist at UrFU, note that the effectiveness of the project depends on the activity of its participants, and it requires a more creative attitude, which is reflected in its name: digitalization and gamification are in the center. Teachers need to try out the methods themselves, to experiment and give feedback, to discuss the results both with students and organizers, to get advice.