Photo credit: susu.ru
The number of participants in the International online competition on Russian as a second language (RSL) has grown five times over 2019. Applications were sent by about 7200 schoolchildren and young people from more than 130 countries of the world. According to experts, the competition demonstrates the highest interest in studying the Russian language throughout the world, the website of the organizer of the competition, St. Petersburg State University (SPBU), reports.
SPBU held its first online RSL competition in 2018, having received less than one and a half thousand applications. Over the year, the number of people wishing to test their knowledge of the Russian language has grown almost fivefold. According to the acting director of the SPBU Language testing center Dmitry Ptyushkin, the tests are filled in online, as the organizers from different countries and continents asked for this possibility.
Schoolchildren and young people from 13 to 30 years old, divided into two age categories, took part in the competition. Questions and tasks proposed by the organizers of the language test were similar to the tasks of the state testing system for RSL. The competition is held jointly by St. Petersburg State University and the Russian Ministry of Education.
SPBU states that an increase in the number of the competition participants is the best response to last year's reports of a decreasing number of students learning the Russian language.
Russkiy Mir
