At the end of March, the 4th All-Russian correspondence Olympiad on Russian as a Foreign Language "Russian Language: Start in a Profession" was held at KNRTU. Students of pre-university courses of Russian universities took part in the Olympiad.

The choice of KNRTU as a venue for the Olympiad is well-justified: our University has extensive experience in organizing Olympiads for foreign students studying at pre-university courses Kazan universities. "This year we decided to expand our geography and invite students not only from Kazan, but also from other universities in the country," said Svetlana Matveeva, the Dean of the Faculty of International Educational Programs.

The Olympiad was held in the categories of "farabroad" and "near abroad", in each of which no more than five students of one university could participate. Students from Russian-speaking families could not participate in the Olympiad.

The correspondence competition was organized in two stages. The first qualifying round– a computer-based lexical and grammatical testwas heldon March 27 and was attended by 39 students from Israel, China, Algeria, Brazil, Nigeria and Vietnam. They studypre-university coursesof Kazan National Technological University, Kazan State Medical University,Kazan State Power Engineering University, Moscow State Technological University "Stankin", St. Petersburg State University, Tomsk Polytechnic University, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kazan State Concervatory named after N. G. Zhiganov, Kazan State Academy of Veterinary Medicineand also several students of KNRTU from Turkmenistan in the category of "near abroad".

Twelve participantswith the best scores wenton to the second round,which was held on March 30. They were offered a communicative speaking task– to create, pronounce and write down a text (monologue) on a specific topic. Competitors were given 45 minutes to complete the task. Their work was organized in the KNRTU’s e-learning system - Moodle.

Participants were evaluated by a competent jury composed of teachers of the Russian as a foreign language from different universities.

According to the results of the Olympiad and the points received for both rounds, the prizes went to students Huang Qiaohong from China (first place) and Paul Amagada from Nigeria (second place). Both of them represent the Department of Russian as a foreign language on Faculty of International Educational Programs of KNRTU. Third place was taken by Liu Xiang from Tomsk state University. MadinaRajapova from Turkmenistan took the first prizes in the "near abroad" category.