SibFU: Graduation Ceremony for Preparatory Department Students

Foreign nationals from 23 countries successfully completed pre-university training.

Siberian Federal University held a graduation ceremony for the foreign nationals who had completed training at the School of Philology and Language Communication Preparatory Department. Course completion certificates were handed in to 115 students from Japan, China, Thailand, Switzerland, Spain, Brazil, Honduras, Uruguay, Colombia etc.; they plan to continue their education in Russia.

The foreigners took a year-long course in Russian and other general disciplines necessary for the basic programmes. Aside from daily classes, SibFU set up the Russian Club for the trainees to help them perfect their language skills in a friendly atmosphere, play tabletop games, learn to sing Russian songs and watch and discuss films. At the end of the academic year, students passed the state examination in Russian as a foreign language confirming their proficiency level at B1.

Studying Russian was hard; the students found the Russian grammar very difficult, in particular the case system. However, intensive studies and the support from teachers and fellow students helped them to cope. A majority of the trainees (some 70 percent) plan to enrol in basic education programmes at Siberian Federal University. They prefer such fields as oil and gas field development, social science, ecology, linguistics and law. Some foreigners plan to take entrance examinations at Moscow or St Petersburg universities.

Siberian Federal University is located in Krasnoyarsk. It is the large university training highly skilled specialists in engineering, natural sciences and humanities. A majority of programmes are taught in Russian, but English medium programmes are available as well.