TSU students from Italy and China have become winners of the 5th Online Festival of Friendship “In the World of Russian Literature”. The Festival is a video contest in which international students demonstrate their knowledge of Russian culture and their creative talents, and is conducted annually by Moscow State University.
International students learn about Russian literature during their studies at the Faculty of Philology. According to Svetlana Faschanova, lecturer in the Russian language, students from Italy are studying at TSU on an individual curriculum drawn up by our university and our partner (University of Verona or Sapienza University of Rome). Typically, these students are interested in Russian literature, and the many works that the Tomsk philology students study do not frighten them.
- Students from China, who aretrained under the programme of double diplomas from the Shenyang Polytechnic University, have no detailed study of Russian literature in their first courses at SPU, but at TSU we give them some general courses. Undergraduate students from China of the programme Russian as a Foreign Language are focused on the study of language and so they do not have literature courses- says Svetlana Faschanova.
The prizewinners of the Festival were TSU students from Italy and one student from China. Italian students Valentina Mellino and Mariachiara Polvere read the fable by Ivan Krylov The Ant and the Grasshopper; their compatriots Judith Sellemond, Elena Piana, and Lisa Mazzanti recited a poem Dream by Vasily Zhukovsky. Zi Chen, a student from China, performed a romance on the lyrics of Anna Akhmatova’s "Come to look at me”.
- Italian students chose these compositions because of the fable and poem by Zhukovsky are associated with Italian literature: they show the closeness of Russian and Italian culture. Students from China worked with their curators: Tomsk residents offered to participants of the competition a choice from several compositions suitable to the character and temperament of the performers. Students chose what they liked - says Svetlana Faschanova.
The contest is held by Moscow State University for undergraduate and graduate students and interns studying Russian as a foreign language. This year, more than 160 students from 53 universities (46 Russian and 7 overseas) and from 42 countries were the finalists.