More than 250 thousand participants are expected for the “Total dictation-2018”

Foreigners who do not speak Russian well will be able to join the action for the first time.

(KZN.RU, March 7, Ksenia Shvetsova). Active preparation for the “Total dictation”, which will be held on April 14, began in Kazan. This year the world action of literacy will be held with innovations. For example, the organizers will sum up the statistics on the number of participants of different nationalities, and foreigners who do not know Russian well enough will be able to join the action.

Olga Rebkovets, a member of the Council on the Russian language under the President of the RF, told at the news conference in the IA “Tatar-inform” that the idea to count the number of participants of different nationalities appeared thanks to Kazan. “Kazan has a great experience in conducting a dictation, there are always a lot of participants. And when we held a meeting in the House of Friendship of Peoples, we were struck by the national diversity of interested people: Chuvash, Mari, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Koreans, Kazakhs, and many others”, said Olga Rebkovets. “We were very touched by this, and we decided this year for the first time to add another statistics, the number of nationalities supporting the action”. A special test that allows checking the level of knowledge of the language was developed for foreign citizens on the basis of the dictation text. This will help to broadcast the main idea of this action, which is to cause interest in the Russian language in a large number of people. “We want people to join the literary language, to improve their ability to speak, think and write correctly. All this is very interrelated”, believes Irina Aleksandrovskaya, the deputy chairman of the Russian National Cultural Association of the RT, member of the Public Chamber of the RT.

The organizers note an important feature of Kazan and Tatarstan in the conduct of the dictation: a close interaction of municipalities with city coordinators. This allows increasing the number of participants of the action every year due to the joining of new districts. Other regions of the country plan to adopt this experience. The number of people who want to test their knowledge is constantly growing not only in the republic but also in Kazan. According to Niyaz Sharafiev, the coordinator of the “Total dictation” in Kazan, about 2 thousand people wrote the text in 2016, and there are more than 3.5 thousand in the past one. More than 250 thousand people are expected for dictation this year. At the moment, 589 Russian and 211 foreign cities fr om 68 countries have already confirmed their participation in the action, 35 new foreign cities have joined the dictation.

Another novelty of the action is the choice of the capital of the “Total dictation”. This year it was Vladivostok, and that's wh ere Guzel Yahina, the author of this year's text, the native of Kazan, will go. It is interesting that the text prepared by the writer specifically for the dictation and telling about one day in the life of the teacher of literature will be included in the novel of the writer “My Children”, dedicated to the Volga Germans. The text is divided into three parts: “Morning”, “Day”, and “Evening”. Each part will be read on the day of dictation (April 14) in different time zones: the first will sound at 8 am Moscow time in the Far East and Eastern Siberia, the second at 11 am in Western Siberia and the Urals, and the third at 2 pm in the European part of Russia. Also, an additional start at 11 pm is offered for cities in the Americas.

Niyaz Sharafiev said that this year it is also planned to hold preparatory courses, which start around mid-March. Participants will be informed about them later. The residents of Kazan will be able to register on the platforms for participation from April 4 on the website of the action.