More than 2.6 thousand people have written the “Total dictation” in Kazan

The Russian words for “apostle”, “play” and “pessimistic” became the most difficult ones for the participants of the action.

(KZN.RU, April 29, Alsu Safina). 6005 residents of Tatarstan, including 2643 Kazan citizens, became participants of the “Total Dictation” this year. 7.2% of them wrote dictation without a single mistake. The youngest participant was 8 years old, and the oldest was 82 years old. The Russian words for “apostle”, “play” and “pessimistic” became the most difficult ones to write. Irina Aleksandrovskaya, the chairperson of the Republican Expert Council of Russian Language Teachers and Philologists of the action “Total Dictation” in the RT, a member of the Public Chamber of the RT, the deputy chairperson of the Russian National Cultural Association of the RT, announced this today at the press conference at the IA “Tatar-inform”.

This year, 81 countries of the world joined the international action, and more than 236 thousand people became participants in the “Total dictation”. Most of the sites were opened in the USA, Germany, China, and Kazakhstan. For the first time, all the municipal districts of Tatarstan took part in the action. 91 sites were opened in the republic for writing the “Total dictation”, including 27 ones in Kazan.

The number of participants in Tatarstan increased by 2 thousand people. If in 2018, the dictation was written by 4001 people, then this year 6005 people took part in it. “We hope that there will be even more participants next year”, said Irina Aleksandrovskaya. According to her, now the average age of participants in the action is 28 years. “This shows that young people like the action. It is relevant, as the organizers themselves say, it is fashionable to be literate”, she said. The youngest participant was 8 years old, he wrote dictation in the school №179 in Kazan. The oldest participant, an 82-year-old man, wrote a dictation at a site organized at the Fair Center “Kazanskaya Yarmarka”.

The number of unsatisfactory work decreased. As for the students of honors, this year there were a bit more of them. Last year the share of those who wrote a dictation without mistakes was 7%, and this year 7.2%. “This is a good result, on average there are the same results throughout the country”, said Irina Aleksandrovskaya. The quality of work In Kazan has also improved as the number of participants has almost doubled, but the number of excellent students is lower than in Tatarstan as a whole.

The expert also spoke about the most typical and incidental mistakes. Thus, the greatest difficulty was caused by the spelling of the Russian words for “apostle”, “play” and “pessimistic”. Less than in previous years, there were punctuation mistakes. The main difficulties were with isolating the introductory words.

This year Pavel Basinsky, a writer, literary scholar, researcher of Leo Tolstoy and Maksim Gorky’s works, became the author of the text for “Total dictation”, based on the play “The Lower Depths”. “The text is interesting, transparent, moderately complex, it is possible to write to every literate person. This is exactly what philologists have been asking”, noted Irina Aleksandrovskaya. “From year to year, the texts are improved. The authors involved in the creation of texts feel more and more responsible for the adaptation of their works to the form of dictation. Last year, Guzel Yakhina had a good text from the point of view of the dictation classics. This year Pavel Basinsky worked very responsibly”. The expert added that the authors of “Total dictation” prefer modern writers, and the goal is to draw attention to the work of contemporaries.

Foreigners were able to write an adapted text. This year 4 sites were organized in Kazan: the KFU, the House of Friendship of Peoples, the KSMU, and the KNRTU-KKhTI. Another site was in the Elabuga branch of the KFU. Vyacheslav Shatalov, the coordinator of the international action in the RT, said that not only the number of sites has increased, but also the number of foreign participants of the “Total Russian Dictation”. This year there were 349, which is 2.5 times more than last year.

The well-known actors of the Theater for Young Spectator, the Kachalov Theater, and well-known journalists have become the speakers of the “Total Dictation” in Kazan. 150 volunteers were involved in the action in Tatarstan, 170 people were invited as experts.