Kraski A1 international - Introduction

“Kraski” was developed at the Interfaculty Language Centre of Forlì (University of Bologna) and is intended for use for self-study of the Russian language in an academic context. The project coincided with the university reform which has supported the view that language learning should also include exercises which the student completes either alone or with the help of a teacher. To earn the necessary credits, the student is now expected to complete 15 hours of self-study in addition to the traditional classroom language lessons. From this point of view, Kraski can be seen as an innovative and useful tool for the student.

Thanks to the relevance of the topics dealt with in the course, Kraski can also be used as a preparation for the international Russian test TORFL (Test of Russian as a Foreign Language) at beginners’ level (TBU).

Kraski combines the use of tried and tested methodologies together with new technologies such as the Internet to create a course which can easily be integrated into academic programs.

The teaching of foreign languages has been greatly influenced by the development of new technology over the last few years. A greater flexibility in software designed for teaching has led to more efficient solutions being adopted. This can be seen most clearly in the sphere of self-access materials (those designed to be used autonomously or in the presence of a ‘facilitator’). The user is no longer a passive subject but has become the protagonist in the learning process, thanks to the interactive characteristics of the new multimedia teaching materials. Kraski is the result of a series of such experiences which have seen the diffusion and the expansion of self-learning activities through the use of the Internet.

The student accesses the course and progressively acquires information by using hypertexts: gone are the limitations of the traditional book, here the student can take any of a number of paths and the result is a personal, pluridimensional and dynamic approach to reading.

The course is based on the idea of the language as a means of interaction: this is made possible through the multimedia resources that deal with real communicative situations. In this way, the users will be able to identify the correct expressions to use in whatever situation they find themselves in.

This multimedia project which is part of the teaching of Russian as a foreign language is, along with distance-learning using the Internet, in a period of experimentation. The Interfaculty Language Centre in Forlì decided not to use a ready-made software for the realization of this project but, instead, designed software which takes into account not only the language-learning aims but also the needs of the user. For this, I would like to thank, in particular, Vanio Preti for the implementation of the software and Svetlana Slavkova of the School of Interpreters and Translators, Forlì, for her linguistic input.

The project has been presented in various Italian and Russian universities, including the University of Padua, Moscow State University and the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia in Moscow. We have thus been able to verify the validity of the results achieved by the course and we are pleased to be able to offer them to the students, and of course to anyone who is interested in the teaching of the Russian language. We are also very grateful, as always, to receive any comments or suggestions on how to improve the course.

The course, which was designed to be used on the Internet, is also available on CD-ROM. In the future, it is envisaged that it will be updated and added to in line with new developments in technology and new teaching needs.

Félix San Vicente

Direttore del Centro Linguistico
dei Poli Scientifico-Didattici
della Romagna