If you had an opportunity to do a dictation to test your current knowledge and skills in your first language (your mother tongue), would you go for it?
Last year over 200,000 people from more than 1,000 cities in Russia took part in such an event. It's a small proportion of the whole population but it's still impressive. What is this event like? It's a free and offline test in the form of a dictation. Just like we did it at school on the regular basis, as part of the curriculum. Everyone can choose a site (usually the venues are schools, colleges, libraries, exhibition centres etc) and do the dictation. Later on you will receive the assessment results.
The fact is that many people start to forget the grammar as they get older. I usually do on a gut instinct when writing but now I feel like brushing up on some spelling and punctuation rules.
This weekend, on April 13th the event takes place again. I've already signed up and chosen a site in my neighbourhood.
Do you have something similar where you live? Would you participate? Please share your experience.
Olga, sorry if made it sound a bit like grumbling, it is just a bad habit of mine:( It is just my personal attitude but I see nothign pedantic about yours:)
Thank you for joining the discussion!
@drasvi
I agree that this test is rather aimed at checking 'technical' skills. It won't help you speak better and more eloquent which is, surely, more important than to be able to write rubbish with good grammar.
However, it's good to know there is such an opportunity for people to dust off their grammar knowledge. At least, once a year :)
I don't want people to forget their first language's basics. I don't want them to ignore and downgrade it. Especially these days when 'Grammarly', 'MS Word' and other spellcheckers are everywhere. And I do realise that this single day won't make much of a difference. But it may pique people's curiousity and encourage them to open grammar books once in a long time .
Maybe it's just me being pedantic... :)
@Victor
It's great to know that more people are willing to take part in it this year!
No, I'm not interested in tests: I know what my Russian is and I'm not interesed in learnering if others are "better" or "worse" than me:)
There is another dimension: I mean artistic value of what we say and write. And in this respect my Russian is just terrible. I think this is the only thing that matters. Should I be proud with making less mistkakes than people whose Russian is really, actually better?
