Kazan students-philologists wrote a dictation by Guzel Yakhina

The dictation “Write, Kazan!” became one of the innovations of the “Aksenov-fest” in 2018.

(KZN.RU, September 14, Alena Miroshnichenko). The All-Kazan dictation “Write, Kazan!” (Rus. “Pishi, Kazan!”) was written today by students and high school students in the framework of the literary and music festival “Aksenov-fest-2018”. Writer Guzel Yakhina, a native of our city, read her own text “Wooden Kazan” on the site of the Institute of Philology and Intercultural Communication named after Tolstoy of the KFU.

Irina Barmetova, coordinator and member of the Aksenov-fest Board of Trustees, noted that Guzel Yakhina was chosen not just because she is related to Kazan but she is connected with the festival itself. The first literary prize that the author received was “Star Ticket”. Now, the film is being shot based on her novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes” in Laishevsky district of Tatarstan with the participation of the famous actress Chulpan Khamatova.

Text by Guzel Yakhina is used for such events not for the first time. As the author said, in fact, it was written for this. Last year it has been read at the rehearsal of the “Total Dictation” at the Paris Book Salon. “The text “Wooden Kazan” tells about the architecture of our city, about what I miss so much in Kazan. I expressed my feelings on this matter in this text. I cannot easily judge its complexity. It seems to me that it is not so complicated, although there are quite a few variants of the correct writing of sentences. When the experts of the “Total Dictation” checked this text and prepared it for the dictation, there were 96 variants of correct punctuation in one sentence”, said Guzel Yakhina.

Mainly those who decided to connect their lives with the Russian language and literature, students-philologists, gathered in the large audience of the university. “First of all, I came here to make sure of my knowledge, to understand whether I made the right choice by deciding to study in the direction of Russian philology”, says Dinara Magosemyanova, a first-year student of “Applied Philology: Russian Language and Literature”.

Her fellow-student Igor Aslanov also came to dictation in order to once again test his knowledge gained at school. “I'm interested to see what mistakes I make, analyze them, find out what new trends have appeared in the Russian language. And when the author is reading, you penetrate the text together with him, you better understand the meaning, depth”, he said.

Irina Barmetova, Maria Golovanivskaya, a writer, the professor of the Moscow State University, Alexander Kabakov, a prose writer and poet, and Artem Skvortsov, the professor of the KFU, will check the work of students.

“Most often there are grammatical mistakes in unstressed positions and, of course, everyone has ceased to understand when and where to put commas. It's definitely necessary to write dictations in a more mature age, because it's interesting, it's like a game”, said Maria Golovanivskaya.

In addition to the university, the dictation passed in the Central City Library at the same time. Irina Barmetova mentioned that it is possible the dictation will be held regularly within the framework of the “Aksenov-fest”.

The 12th “Aksenov-fest” started yesterday and will be held until September 16. Every year the program of the festival is replenished with new activities.