Teach Russian? Apply for internships in Russia

March 18 2016

Gleb Fedorov

RIR

In order to apply for an intership for 2016, a teacher has to hurry up and send in his or her application through the Rossotrudnichestvo site by April 1.

Artyom Korotayev/TASS

With the Moscow International Education Salon 2016 due to begin, Veniamin Kaganov, Russia’s Deputy Minister of Education and Science spoke to RIR about a special programme for Russian-language teachers, and how a portal to promote Russian is developing.

The Russian Ministry of Education and Science launched a programme in 2013 to promote the Russian language abroad. The Pushkin Institute of Russian Language inaugurated the ‘Education in Russian’ portal in 2014, within the framework of the programme to promote Russian. The portal offers not only a course in the Russian language for all levels, but also has programmes to improve qualifications to teach Russian as a foreign language (RFL).

Veniamin Kaganov, the Russian Deputy Minister of Education and Science, spoke to RIR about the portal’s progress.

RIR: You are the director of the programme to promote the Russian language. How is it evolving?

VK: Better than we expected. People from more than 176 countries are using our portal. We have more than two and a half million visitors and about 400,000 active users. More than 60 new courses have been introduced on the portal this month. Now our objective is not just to continue expanding this resource, but also to make it noticeable around the world. We are thus discussing the possibility of creating a network of university-partners of the Pushkin Institute of Russian Language that could conduct courses and tests in various countries.

RIR: How can a RFL teacher receive method training in Russia?

VK: The easiest way is to register on the ‘Education in Russian’ portal and sign up for a free online course to raise his or her qualifications. More than 4,500 people have already done so. The portal offers several thousand hours of lectures dealing with all the methods of teaching the Russian language. Registered users come in direct contact with the methodologists from the Pushkin Institute, since tutors begin working with the RFL teachers at a certain stage of the training.

Furthermore, Rossotrudnichestvo (a federal agency that promotes Russian soft power abroad) offers quotas for RFL teachers to come to Russia and do an internship. However, in order to make it for 2016, a teacher has to hurry up and send in his or her application through the Rossotrudnichestvo site by April 1.

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