University's Course Available on Chinese Online Education Platform

10:56, July 26, 2022

The intensive includes 20 lessons in the Russian language

On July 22, the Chinese educational platform XuetangX, with which UrFU has signed a Cooperation Agreement and Online Course Placement Agreement in 2021, published "Online Course of the Russian Language: Starter". The intensive was created by the Preparatory Department for Foreign Students at Ural Federal University. This is the first UrFU online course presented on this platform.

The intensive is now available in Chinese for everyone. The course can be taken for free, or one can pay for a certificate, which costs 299 yuan. The course is designed for students who learn Russian from the beginning. It lasts for six weeks with an intensity of 20 hours per week. A total of 324 hours of Russian language material is recorded which is 20 lessons.

The authors were lecturers of the Preparatory Department for Foreign Students, and the course was recorded in the studio of the Division for Continuing Education and Career Guidance, translation into Chinese was done by the Confucius Institute of Ural Federal University.

The "Online Course of the Russian Language: Starter" consists of an introductory and phonetic course and three modules. Each module includes communicative situations on everyday topics, a grammar analysis and a video simulator for independent practice of the learned material, as well as a final test. Special attention is given to illustrations, reflecting Ekaterinburg through the eyes of a Ural Federal University student, and dialogues for practicing the most common communicative situations of student life. The main characters of the video are the Chinese students of UrFU and the professors themselves.

"We composed the topics based on real communicative tasks, aimed at the comfort of the student in a language environment. Of course, we tried to make each topic fascinating, interesting, and in some places even fun. Every student can go through the course on their own, go back to the material, check themselves. The platform made it possible to make the course convenient and intuitive," said Lyubov Mashtakova, one of the authors of the course.

This course demonstrates the potential of the Preparatory Department for Foreign Students in distance learning of the Russian language. For Chinese students, the online format of learning remains relevant, and many are interested in enrolling in Russian universities. In the future it is planned to translate the course into English and place it on the Open Education platform.

Reference

In March 2022, Ural Federal University and Qingdao Hengxing University of Science and Technology signed a Treaty to open a Russian Language Center in the People's Republic of China. The partner university plans to enroll groups in the fall semester.

The news article was translated by UrFU International Marketing Office
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