Tiraspol, 20 November. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. From 13 to 16 November the House of Moscow in Minsk hosted the 5th International Conference «Preservation, support and promotion of the Russian culture and language abroad». Moscow's department of foreign economic and international relations organised the symposium.
Teachers and lecturers of the Russian language and literature from 17 countries took part in the event, including Armenia, Bulgaria, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine, Italy, Israel, Montenegro and Pridnestrovie.
Pridnestrovie’s teachers participated in the event the second year running.
«We have sent our delegates — Russian language teachers. We know they will represent Pridnestrovie there with dignity and tell what we do to preserve and develop the Russian language and culture. We have long established working relations with the organisers, Minsk's House of Moscow," said the chair of Pridnestrovie's Union of Russian Communities, Viorika Kokhtareva.
This year Pridnestrovie was represented by the headmistress of Tiraspol Secondary School No. 5, Tatyana Loginova, and the head of the Republican Ukrainian Theoretical Lyceum, Nina Kotovskaya.
«The conference aimed to support, develop and further promote the Russian culture and Russian language abroad. Since we do not live in Russia, though in the Russian educational space, this conference provides us with an important opportunity to assert ourselves. I shared with my colleagues the experience of teaching the Russian language and literature in Pridnestrovie, and namely at our Tiraspol School No. 5," said Tatyana Loginiva.
The teacher recalls that when she said in her speech that the number of academic hours for teaching the Russian language and literature coincides with that in Russia and that a special project Textbook aimed at providing Russian language schools with new textbooks was launched by President Shevchuk and Russia's vice premier, Dmitry Rogozin, the audience burst into applause.
«I illustrated my speech with a slide show depicting our celebration of the Pancake week, International Day of the Native Language, Day of Popular Consent, Slavonic Literature and Culture Day, which struck a deep chord with the audience," noted Tatyana Loginova.
The conference showed that the Russian language is becoming more and more popular not only in Eastern Europe, which is first of all due to Russia's economic and political growth, but also in the countries where there used to exist strong Russian language schools.
At the same time, the sphere of applying Russian has been steadily declining in Baltic and Central Asian states. In Ukraine, where over half a population use Russian for everyday communication, there are almost no Russian language schools left, and teaching Russian has considerably reduced.
«It is strange that in Russian speaking regions of Ukraine only half an hour a week is allocated to teaching Russian, and pupils have only one class in two weeks. This time is not enough to study grammar, spelling and punctuation. Teachers expressed concern that Pushkin and Tolstoy are studied in the course of foreign literature, not Russian. Only one academic hour is allocated to studying works by these great authors," said Tatyana Loginova.
