New step towards finnish students

29th of November 2010

The Russian Language and Culture Instite took part in a two-day international workshop on studying and teaching Russian language and Russian-speaking immigrants’ adaptation. This event took place in the finnish town of Joensuu on the 25-26th of November 2010.

It’s evident that Russian-Finnish colaboration is gaining in experience. Frequent mutual visits of Finnish and Russian tourists, entrepreneurs, scientists, scholars to Russia and Finland respectively stimulate the interest to study language and cultural heritage among Russians and Finns. Since Finnish labour-market keenly needs Russian-speaking personnel, the question about Russian as a second state language is a topical problem and is widely discussed in some regions of the country.

Thereupon an increasing popularity of Russian language schools in Finland does not surprise. Finnish-Russian School of Eastern Finland (Itä-Suomen koulu) is not an exclusion. Over 600 finnish children and children of Russian nationals study Russian at its branch offices in Lappeenranta, Imatra and Joensuu. Considerable experience of this school in teaching Russian as a foreign language makes it a good partner for close cooperation with Russian language schools and educational institutions and a good organizer of international events such as the latest one.

Along with the School the event was organized by Joensuu authorities and ”Russkiy mir” foundation. Rossotrudnichestvo (Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States Affairs, Compatriota Residing Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation) representative office in Finland, Moscow, Petrozavodsk, Saint Petersburg State Universities, teachers of Russian and Finnish language from Russia and Finland participated in this workshop.

RLCI mission was represented by Assistant Director of the Institute Boris N.Kovalenko (Ph.D) and Deputy Head of Development Service Alexander V.Korotyshev. B.Kovalenko’s address concerned the state of Russian language in the world and basic tendencies in teaching and studying Russian. A.Korotyshev delivered his speech on new series of short-term programs “Russian Studies” for Russian expatriots abroad. These programs were launched in October this year and went off successfully. Keenly interesting for participants was the speech of Linda Väirinen, a graduate of the School of Eastern Finland and a RLCI student. She told about her impressions of three-month training in RLCI.

Our cooparetion with the School of Eastern Finland is only in its first year. But we’ve made a lot together: in April 2010 we conducted Russian language and culture short-term program for 25 graduates of the School of Eastern Finland, in September RLCI teachers experiment on teaching Russian to bilingual children. There is no doubt that we’ll keep developing our colaboration: new group of Finnish students is coming in April 2011.