“Armenia needs the Russian language”: question mark or accent?
“Moscow home” with the support of YerevanMunicipality organized a contest of Russian language teachers. Participating teachers were elected in their own schools. By the way, schools with advanced courses of Russian were selected. Teachers must write a composition titled “Armenia needs the Russian language”. They must decide to put a question mark or accent. Everything would be fine if it didn’t turn out that many teachers were unaware why they had come there, “We were just told to come here to take part in the contest, nothing more”, “let them say us the topic and we will write and send, we all know writing, do they want to check?”, “It is offending for a teacher”,- said the teachers, who didn’t introduce themselves being afraid of losing their jobs. But after expressing their anger, the teachers took part in the contest and wrote the compositions. Before that, we spoke to the teachers about knowledge of the Russian language among Armenian young people. Teachers note that when they were young, everybody knew Russian, but even today pupils learn the language not bad, “In the past it was different, we went abroad very often and all learnt Russian. But today children didn’t go abroad and even if they go, they need English more,”- in the conversation with A1+ said number 77 school teacher Anna Harutyunyan and added that there is also another problem: today children don’t like reading neither Armenian nor Russian, “We try to awake the love toward language, literature and reading. We want them to realize that if they want to achieve something they also need Russian. Our present political situation hints that we will need Russian very much,”- she added. About 15 years ago the situation was worse, says number 150 school teacher Svetlana Melikyan. Now the knowledge of Russian has improved a little, but there is still the tendency, pupils are very weak, “Because there is no contact, they don’t listen to Russian on TV, they don’t read. Besides today pupils don’t even speak literate Armenian, let alone speak Russian.” By the way, the compositions will be checked by Russian language specialists of the YSU. The results will be summed up on October 23. First three places will get valuable prizes.
