St Petersburg University successfully develops educational projects in Greece

The course was developed as part of the Russia — Greece cross-year of history and launched in autumn 2021. The programme, which is designed for ten lectures, includes such topics as the formation of the ancient Russian state, the connection between Byzantium and Russia, the role of the Russian Empire and the emergence of the Modern Greek state, the reign of the first Romanovs, the era of Peter the Great and the activities of Olga Konstantinovna Romanova, the Russian Queen of Greece, and other pages of the common historical past. For students who have recently started learning Russian, classes were held in English, and those who already knew it at the B1 level could listen to lectures in the original language.

The project received a lot of attention, because the theme of the joint history of two such close countries and nations as Russia and Greece interests a lot of people. More than 100 people took part in the project, and there was always a high attendance at classes, despite the fact that they were held in the early morning on Saturdays.

Dmitry Ptyushkin, Director of the Language Testing Centre of SPbU

‘Intensive discussions took place at lectures, after them and even continued in Russian language lessons. Listeners left a large number of reviews and comments on social networks. We have already received more than 200 requests to repeat this course but we plan not to repeat it but to refine and improve it. Our countries have a rich joint history that is impossible to cover in ten lectures, so our center has a large field for work ahead’, said Dmitry Ptyushkin, Director of the Language Testing Centre of SPbU.

The representative office of St Petersburg University in Greece was opened in 2019. On its basis there are conducted: state testing in Russian as a foreign language (TORFL), lessons of the Russian as a foreign language and other joint activities.

Furthermore, the final lesson of the additional educational programme on translation for Greek specialists was held there on gratis. 20 professional translators from Thessaloniki, Athens, Corinth and other cities became its listeners. According to Dmitry Ptyushkin, more often students of such programmes are Russians who has been living in another country for a long time but for this programme it was Greek citizens who enrolled.

The programme aroused a great interest, since St Petersburg University School on Translation and Interpreting has earned a good reputation, we were contacted by 20 translators who wanted to be trained at the University’s representative office.

Dmitry Ptyushkin, Director of the Language Testing Centre of SPbU

‘We have received positive feedback and plan to start the second enrollment in the near future, as well as to open the maximum number of additional programmes for listeners in the representative office. In particular, we would like to work with representatives of the IT industry who study Russian language and also we want to help teachers in getting professional development’, told director of the Language Testing Centre.

A huge number of various events take place within the framework of the work of the St Petersburg University Representative Office. Each of them is organized at the listeners’ request that is why our events are popular among them. Next week, at the Centre of the Russian Language and Culture "Russian Word" will be opened a conversational club of the Russian language dedicated to the Russian cinematography. For two months, the participants will meet and discuss modern Russian films which are quite popular in Greece.