“The prince and the prince met a mouse at midnight.
How will you write it?
Julia turns to her student.
Nine-year-old Arseniy, in response, only makes a pained grimace - they say, it's impossible to write.
“Write, write, now we’ll sort everything out,” the teacher smiles.
Arseny studies with a Russian language tutor twice a week, now they are going through the program of the third grade of the Russian school, which the boy will go to on September 1.
In Ukraine, where they study from the age of six, he managed to finish four classes, but he never studied Russian at school, although he is from a Russian-speaking family.
The family of Arseniy Soloshenko arrived in Russia in mid-March from the city of Rubizhne, Luhansk region.
At the end of April, the city came under the control of the allied forces and is now part of the LPR.
“There were no Russian-language schools in our city, all education was only in Ukrainian.
High school students could still study Russian as a foreign language, but the generation of Arseniy - children who went to first grade four years ago - would not have studied Russian at all, even in high school, ”the boy’s mother Svetlana Soloshenko tells RT.
At school, Arseniy spoke, read and wrote in Ukrainian, but he always communicated with his family and friends in Russian.
Svetlana had a similar situation: at home she spoke Russian, but at work she read and wrote in Ukrainian.
“I am fluent in both languages.
When Arseniy was little, first we studied the letters of the Russian alphabet with him, then the Ukrainian.
He learned to read already in Ukrainian, and I did not let him read in Russian, because I did not want to overload him.
In addition, he also began to study English.
It was hard for Arseniy to study Ukrainian at school, the Russian language is more understandable for him.
This is especially noticeable now, when he is studying in Russia, he understands the material faster and easier, ”says the interlocutor.
Arseniy read his first book in Russian before the family was evacuated from Rubezhnoye - his mother gave him The Adventures of Dunno and His Friends.
His parents do not yet plan to return to their homeland: their house in Rubizhnoye is completely destroyed and here, in Russia, the family starts life “completely from scratch”.
Language difficulties
Tutor Arseniy Yulia is 55 years old, she is also from Ukraine.
She moved to Russia in 2013.
Now the woman teaches Russian in one of the Moscow universities, she also speaks Ukrainian.
Knowing two languages, according to Yulia, helps her a lot in teaching refugee children, because she knows what to pay attention to.
“The related Slavic languages have similar constructions in common, but the rules of grammar and spelling are different there.
I know what difficulties children may have when switching from Ukrainian to Russian, and I can give them the necessary information in advance.
For example, Arseniy and I are going through the topic “soft sign after hissing”.
In Russian, its setting depends on the gender of the noun, but in Ukrainian this sign is not put after hissing: it is written “night”, “pіch”, etc., ”says the interlocutor of RT.
Now in her native Kharkov, as in other Ukrainian cities, there are no Russian-language schools.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky liquidated them by his decree in the spring of 2020.
Julia is sure that the abolition of the Russian language in schools has led to problems in learning not only Russian, but also the Ukrainian language.
“When I studied at the Kharkov school back in the Soviet Union, we studied Ukrainian from the second grade as a foreign language.
As a result, I knew Ukrainian very well and still understand it perfectly.
Now the Ukrainian language is taught in schools immediately as a native language, but it is not such for children from Russian-speaking families.
This leads to the fact that children calmly read texts, because the letters are very similar, but the meaning of many words is not understood, ”she explains.
In her opinion, if Russian-speaking students were taught Ukrainian as a foreign language, that is, in stages and in detail, with a dictionary, then they would really know it at a high level.
Yulia's colleague Anna (the name has been changed for the safety of the heroine -
RT
.) - a teacher with 35 years of experience in one of the Kharkov schools - says that in everyday life the vast majority of schoolchildren in the city use Russian.
“99% of children in our city spoke Russian in everyday life, at least until recent events.
From my point of view, it is more difficult for schoolchildren, especially in middle grades, to study subjects in Ukrainian, especially mathematics, physics, chemistry, where there are specific terms.
On the one hand, Ukrainian spelling is easier, and dictation in this language is much easier than Russian.
On the other hand, it is more difficult for Russian-speaking children to write an essay in Ukrainian, because they have a poor vocabulary, ”says Anna RT.
Whether Russian language and literature will be taught next academic year is not at all clear, the interlocutor adds.
“Our local education officials, for example, are discussing whether it is necessary to ban the study of Lermontov’s work, since “A Hero of Our Time” refers to Russian officers.
Questions also arose about Russian epics, because they say that Ilya was born in Murom, ”adds Anna.
"Don't just memorize the rules"
Sonya Kovtun, a 14-year-old schoolgirl from Kharkiv, says that two years ago her school, like everyone else in Ukraine, was “completely translated into Ukrainian.”
All notes, assignments and answers of students had to be only on the move.
Teachers were also banned from teaching in Russian.
“Although some teachers still sometimes gave lectures in Russian, we wrote notes in Ukrainian.
I personally had a mixed language in my notebooks: I wrote down something in Ukrainian, something in Russian, ”the girl says.
Outside of school, for example with friends or during dance classes, Sonya always spoke Russian.
When asked if she considers herself Russian-speaking, the schoolgirl answers confidently: “Of course.
Kharkov is a Russian city.
Sonya studied her native language at school as a foreign language - three times a week.
Another foreign language was English.
In May, she and her family evacuated to Russia and is now preparing to go to the eighth grade in one of the Moscow schools.
Sonya admits that although she thinks and speaks fluent Russian, she lacks knowledge of grammar and spelling.
Therefore, now she is engaged with a tutor.
With Elizaveta Vovchenko, a first-year student at a Moscow university, Sonya meets in a quiet coffee shop in the center of Moscow.
Today they repeat the theme of participles, and the schoolgirl does the task - she indicates from which verbs they are formed.
Elizabeth notices a mistake in the word “fluctuate” and prompts: “It is written with a soft sign.
You can check through the question "What to do?".
“Oh, right,” Sonya is a little embarrassed and adjusts her glasses.
“It’s just that our verbs in -tsya are always written with a soft sign.”
Like other volunteer tutors, Elizaveta works with Sonya for free.
Her only condition is that the classes are held in person, and not by video link.
“The teacher should not only give information, but also, if possible, be a friend to the student.
This is all the more important for Sonya, because she arrived in a city completely unfamiliar to her, where she still has no friends.
It is important that she can talk to someone, and not just memorize the rules and go home, ”says Elizabeth.
So far, Elizaveta is studying with Sonya individually, but perhaps soon two more of Sonya's peers will join them - also eighth graders who were evacuated from the war zone from Ukraine.
The tutor hopes that this way the guys will be able to make friends with each other.
Students from new territories
A Russian tutor for Sonya was found by volunteers at the Church Headquarters for Helping Refugees at the Synodal Charity Department of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The head of the headquarters, Natalya Yeremicheva, in an interview with RT, notes that almost all families with children who came from the conflict zone and turned to them for help decide to stay in Russia for at least the next year.
“We help people find housing, make documents - these are their first requests when they come to Russia.
When they exhale a little, they decide to stay here for a long time, they begin to make plans for the future: adults are looking for a job, and for children, the issue of education arises.
Gradually, people began to turn to us with a request to help prepare their children for school, because the program they studied, of course, differs from the Russian one.
So, we have created a direction of education: we are looking for teachers and tutors who are ready to work with children for free, and we give their contacts to families, ”says Eremicheva.
The Russian language is one of the most popular subjects in which refugee children are looking for tutors to improve their knowledge.
This was told to RT by the creator of the project "We study together", a businessman from Rostov-on-Don Evgeny Demensky.
“Guys have to relearn all subjects in Russian.
As it turned out, even mathematics is difficult to master without a language.
Another popular request is to pull up in the subjects that are needed to pass the exam and the exam.
And, oddly enough, many children ask to find them an English tutor.
By the way, among our volunteer tutors there are now native speakers from foreign countries,” says Demensky.
The project was created in February, when, after the escalation of the conflict in the Donbass, thousands of refugees began to arrive in the Rostov region.
According to Demensky, at first, the supply of tutoring services exceeded demand: in the very first weeks, about 200 people declared their readiness to help children learn for free.
However, now there are more than 400 students in the queue for tutors, and there are not enough teachers for everyone.
“You have to understand that there are more than 400 children alone, and each student can have several subjects in which he wants to catch up.
We expected a calm summer, but just before school, the guys who came to Russia from the war zone are trying to catch up with all the subjects so that they can go to school in September.
The number of students is constantly growing: as soon as a new territory is vacated, the guys immediately come from there and write us applications,” said Evgeny Demensky.
Now many volunteer teachers take several students, there are those who have entire classes in the group - 20-30 people.
But there are still not enough tutors for everyone who wants to.
The creators of the project plan to start collaborating with online educational platforms to negotiate a discount for refugee children and help them access quality education.