"Russia-India" teleconference with Indian students aimed at establishing great relations between the countries

TV BRICS International Media Network together with the "Modern Russian" project organised a "Russia-India" teleconference with Indian students. The event took place on September 22. The teleconference was hosted by Tamara Skok, head of the international outreach project “Modern Russian", MKR-Media, and Svetlana Kostenko, journalist of Omsk television company.

Such video meetings are aimed at establishing partnership relations between the two countries. Thanks to Omsk specialists, foreigners get acquainted with Russia and improve their knowledge of the Russian language. The teleconference was conducted for teachers, graduate students and students, as reported by the “Omsk Zdes” news agency, a partner of the TV BRICS International Media Network.

The video lesson themed "Let's hold hands, friends!" involved EFL, Hyderabad, the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, students of courses at RCSC Chennai, Delhi University and Amity University, as well as a Russian language teacher at the National Defence Academy. Most of the students were just beginning their introduction to Russian, more than 50 people attended the event.

"In the title we put lines from a song by Bulat Okudzhava. It would have been a big risk to include the whole quatrain, as we don't know the audience's level of Russian. So we limited ourselves to one line. And with an emphasis on one of the oldest symbols, the symbol of the hand, in our shared cultures, we worked," said Tamara Skok, head of the international outreach project “Modern Russian", MKR-Media.

Within the framework of the teleconference students were able to enrich their vocabulary with expressions and phrases frequently used by native speakers of Russian. They told the foreigners about folk crafts, traditions, customs, omens common in different regions of Russia, as well as about how word-forming morphemes work in Russian. 

The Indian side thanked the Omsk specialists for the informative lecture and promised to be even more active during the next video lesson.

"The teleconference "Let's hold hands, friends!" initiated by TV BRICS, "Modern Russian" project and Russian House in Chennai, was really informative and, most importantly, very useful. The lecture introduced listeners to various phrases and combinations using the word 'hand' in Russian and their meanings. Their explanation was accompanied with linguistic and cultural commentaries, videos and photos of traditional Russian handicrafts, and the information was presented in an easy-to-understand form, which made the lecture very exciting. I thank the organisers and presenters for such an interesting lecture and hope that more lectures will be organised," said Meenu Bhatnagar, Assistant Professor, Centre of Russian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

To remind, TV BRICS International Media Network has been actively cooperating with leading universities of BRICS countries for several years to promote and popularise Russian as a foreign language. In 2018 and 2019, "Russia-Brazil" and "São Paulo-Omsk" teleconferences were organised.

Photo: IStock