On April 20, the Total Dictation All-Russian project took place in Bldg. 11 of Saratov State University for the 20th anniversary time. There were seven sites at SSU. About 300 Saratov residents came to test their knowledge of the Russian language, including active citizens, teaching staff, and students.

This year, the participants of the project wrote the Dear Diary text by Anna Matveyeva. In a video message, the author of the dictation hoped the members would spend time with pleasure and noted that everyone who came to check themselves had already earned the top mark for their desire to write in Russian correctly.

‘On a day-off, many people have come to SSU who wanted to check their literacy – parents took their children with them, and students joined the project. People really had an incentive to write a dictation – to remind themselves of the rules of the Russian language in order to become even more literate. I am glad that the number of participants in this important event increases every year,’ Rector of Saratov State University Alexei Chumachenko said.

The dictation was read by the university staff, namely Chair of the Department of Literary Studies and Journalism Valerii Prozorov and Professor of the same department Kirill Zakharov. The text was also read out loud by Chair of the Council of the Regional Branch of the Russian movement of Children and Youth entitled The Movement of the First Anna Popova, a teacher of the Russian language and literature of Lyceum No. 62 Maria Khokhlova, Chair of the Committee on Public Relations and Tourism of Saratov Evgenia Koznova, an actor of the Saratov Academic Theatre of Young Viewers Vladimir Yegorov, and the chief editor of the information service, a news and other shows presenter of Saratov STRC Lilia Matveyeva.

‘It was a pleasure for me to participate in the project. The text is really interesting. Despite the fact that it has a lot of the author's research, I was curious to write it. The atmosphere is also encouraging that interested participants were found among the people of different ages, different types of activities, and educational levels. All speakers perfectly coped with the task of conveying the author's spirit of the text,’ Tatyana Gaidash, a master’s degree student at the Institute of Philology and Journalism, who checks the Total Dictation, said.

According to Olga Neznayeva, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Language, Speech Communication, and Russian as a Foreign Language and an organiser of the project, there are many author's punctuation marks in the text, but for the examiners there is a text with variants, so the participants should not worry about the author's punctuation – all punctuation marks are displayed in the text following the rules of the Russian language. The paper of each participant is checked twice, and the excellent students are checked three times.

You will be able to find out your result after April 26 on the official website of the project. The awarding of excellent students will take place at SSU at the beginning of May. Since 2004, the project has been held annually in Russian cities and around the world in order to promote literacy.