St Petersburg University linguists speak on how to get school students interested in linguistics and cognitive studies
21 February is the International Mother Language Day. Not only school teachers, but also teachers of higher education institutions are striving to instil respect for the native speech in children and young people. The Lessons of the Present project, implemented online by the Sirius Educational Centre, enables school students to discover the secrets of the language. This career guidance project involves the linguists of the University, namely the staff of the Lyudmila Verbitskaya Department of General Linguistics and the Institute for Cognitive Studies at St Petersburg University.
From 2017 to 2021, three cycles of the project dedicated to cognitive studies were implemented. They were led by Professor Tatiana Chernigovskaya, Director of the Institute for Cognitive Studies at St Petersburg University. This year, school students of the 7th to 11th grades from all over Russia participated in the cycle titled "Lessons of Real Speech Perception". They worked on solving a particular linguistic problem in the format of school studios. Associate Professor Elena Riekhakainen, Acting Head of the Lyudmila Verbitskaya Department of General Linguistics at St Petersburg University, was in charge of this cycle. She delivered a lecture titled "How to Solve the Mysteries of Speech Perception?" to the participants in the Lessons of the Present. In her lecture, Elena Riekhakainen spoke about psycholinguistic methods for studying the perception of speech. After the lecture, the participants in the cycle were to design their own experiment, showing how well small children understand words that are pronounced in abbreviated forms (for example, pasib instead of spasibo ("thank you") or toka instead of tolko ("only")). ’The main objective of the project is to show what a researcher does in our field. People do not always understand what linguistics is. Their knowledge of linguistics is often limited to school lessons in Russian and English,’ said Vladislav Zubov, a doctoral student and lecturer in the Lyudmila Verbitskaya Department of General Linguistics at St Petersburg University. ’We set the participants an academic task, which implies that they are to offer ways to solve a real-life linguistic problem.’
Apart from St Petersburg University lecturers, the expert panel that evaluated the solutions offered by the school students also included bachelor’s students in the "Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics (English)" programme implemented at the University. In total, about 50 solutions were presented. According to the experts, the most interesting solutions were offered by students of schools in the town of Vyksa, the Nizhny Novgorod Region, and St Petersburg. Both experiments developed by school students are a game between a child and an experimenter. Such experiments make it possible to obtain the data necessary for researchers in a form that is interesting to the child.
In 2023, St Petersburg University opens admissions to the bachelor’s programmes: "Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics (English)"; "Comparative-Historical Linguistics (English)" ; and "Modern Greek, Byzantine and Modern Greek Philology". The master’s programme "Theory and History of Language and European Languages" is also open for admission.
Since 2018, University students have been conducting an annual full-time linguistics programme at Sirius as part of the Science track. It was previously part of the Literary Work track. The programme is led by Elena Riekhakainen, Associate Professor at St Petersburg University, and Alexander Pipersky, a renowned Russian linguist. Traditionally, the programme includes some problems to solve and a project work section, so that gifted students could master the skills of a linguist, gain knowledge beyond the school curriculum, and get ready for subject-specific Olympiads.
Each year in July, the Sirius Centre hosts one more event that St Petersburg University students take part in. It is "Big Challenges", an All-Russian competition of science and technology projects. In 2022, as part of the cognitive studies section, school students solved a problem related to the perception of works of art. When solving that problem, the eye-tracking technique was used. The work of school students was supervised by Polina Eismont, Associate Professor at St Petersburg University, and Anastasiia Konovalova, a doctoral student at St Petersburg University.
Much attention is paid to regional cooperation, both through Sirius offices and directly with schools. A special part in this work is played by the centres "Intellect" (the Leningrad Region) and "Academy of Talents" (St Petersburg). They regularly implement career guidance programmes in linguistics and cognitive studies. Their participants get acquainted not only with the current problems of science, but also with the languages of the world taught at St Petersburg University, from Albanian to Japanese. ’We offer participants a choice of several languages. For example, we have recently organised an Olympiad preparation programme at the Academy of Talents. We offered Basque, Ancient Greek, Swahili and Czech there,’ Elena Riekhakainen shared. ’We do that because the participants in linguistics Olympiads must understand that there are languages that are not structured like Russian.’
We offer linguistic problems that are related to languages unfamiliar to our participants. The purpose is as follows. In order to solve such problems, you do not need to speak the language. If you have learned it, there is no problem as such. Using the limited linguistic material at their disposal, the linguist is to understand how a particular linguistic phenomenon works.
Vladislav Zubov, a doctoral student and lecturer in the Lyudmila Verbitskaya Department of General Linguistics at St Petersburg University
Academic programmes in the Russian language, seminars for teachers, and project work with school students in various regions of Russia help teachers improve their skills. They also help students understand various aspects of the work of a linguist and join the Olympiad movement. The regions include Sakhalin, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, the Moscow Region, and Cherepovets.
In December 2022, the "School League" autonomous non-commercial educational organisation implemented a project for students of Yugra schools as part of the "Chitaiburg" educational programme. Our University students held master classes on experimental methods in linguistics and linguistic problems. They were also members of the expert council during the defence of the projects that had been commissioned by various customer organisations and implemented by school students. One of the projects was proposed by linguists from St Petersburg University. The participants were to study what people of different ages understand as well-bred speech. As a solution, the school student team conducted a survey which evolved into a Telegram channel dedicated to the Russian language.
’We are very happy that our projects, organised jointly with our partners from different regions of Russia, increasingly help school students learn about the nature of linguistics and cognitive studies. Young people discover their native language from a new perspective and show interest in learning new languages, trying their hand at teaching and research activities,’ Elena Riekhakainen highlighted.