St Petersburg University opens the Linguistic Clinic

Bachelor’s and master’s students in Linguistics and Philology will be engaged in the Linguistic Clinic as part of clinical internships under the guidance of academic staff with extensive experience in research, pedagogy, and consultation services.

The Help Desk has been operating since 2017. You can receive professional advice on any question about the Russian language. Among them are the norms of the modern Russian language; the history of the Russian language; sources of knowledge about the Russian language (dictionaries, exemplary texts).

Questions and inquiries from citizens and organisations are accepted by e-mail: lingv.clinic@spbu.ru.

‘The inquiries to the Help Desk mostly come from citizens who are interested in the norms of the modern Russian language or who need professional advice on a particular subject about Russian. Most inquiries are the cases in relation to the rules of the Russian language. Yet some of them need explanations: these questions are related to new phenomena and trends in the language,’ said Ekaterina Zorina, Head of the Linguistic Clinic at St Petersburg University, Associate Professor in the Department of Russian Language at St Petersburg University.

Among the areas developed by the Linguistic Clinic is applied rhetoric. It is primarily concerned with developing tailored educational and training programmes. The importance of developing this area is largely due to the relevance and demand for soft skills in the labour market. The customer can receive a unique linguistic product underpinned by academic knowledge and expertise. It is free of charge. Master’s students engaged in developing educational products can form competencies in teaching communicative soft skills.

The Linguistic Clinic also focuses on speechwriting, i.e. writing texts at the request of the customer. It is among the main competencies of a philologist, said the founders of the Linguistic Clinic.

Although the Linguistic Clinic has just been opened, it is already ready to make plans for the future.

In the long-term, the Linguistic Clinic may expand its consultation services and cover methodological issues: consultations on how to teach the Russian language, foreign languages that are taught at St Petersburg University, and Russian as a foreign language.

Ekaterina Zorina, Head of the Linguistic Clinic of St Petersburg State University, Associate Professor in the Department of Russian Language at St Petersburg University

Among the short-term plans is a series of meetings with philologists who are experts in various fields. You can learn more about the announcements on the social networks of the Linguistic Clinic.

The Linguistic Clinic actively advocates collaboration not only with external organisations, but also with other Clinics and Departments at the University.

’It would be interesting and fruitful to cooperate with the Social Translation Centre at St Petersburg University and with the Media Centre. We have reached an agreement on cooperation with the Clinic of Communication Projects. The Linguistic Clinic is open to cooperation and interclinical interaction,’ said Ekaterina Zorina.