In principle, the ministry's decision to introduce testing came as no surprise - it had been provided for in Presidential Decree No. 1325 of November 14, 2002. That document lays out a new procedure for examining matters of Russian citizenship, under which anyone wishing to become a full-fledged Russian must henceforth present, among other papers, a certificate of passing the state Russian language test or a document replacing it (a school-leaving certificate obtained before 1991 from a Soviet school, or later from a Russian school or a Russian-language school abroad). However, are there few laws and decrees in Russia that never materialized properly because the supporting departmental regulations were not developed? In the case of the Russian language, the authorities are determined: in the spring, teachers of Russian from several leading universities in the country were put to work to produce a testing program by mid-summer. A list has already been drawn up of more than one and a half hundred educational institutions in the capital, Russian regions, and abroad that have the right to conduct testing. A trial version of the test has been developed, registered with the Ministry of Justice, and sent to educational organizations. The form of the certificate has also been approved. This means that this autumn many migrants settled in Russia who dream of obtaining citizenship will send not only their own children to school. Hard study is likely also in store for parents: few will be able to pass the test without preparation. For most, Russian language testing threatens to become a serious problem.
What are we taking?Experts have no doubt: despite the tight deadlines, the testing materials for citizenship are well designed. It will not be possible to deceive the examiners - only those who get at least 65% of correct answers on the test really know the state language of Russians well. Professionals worked on the tests: the field of Russian as a foreign language was one of the most in-demand areas of philology in Soviet times, and immense methodological experience has been accumulated there. Today Russia is a member of ALTE - the Association of Language Testers in Europe, which unites more than 20 of the world's major languages.
“The six-level scale for assessing language proficiency developed by ALTE is convenient because it allows fairly precise equivalents to be established when comparing testing systems used in different countries and for different languages,” says Igor Dyakonov, head of the Head Center for Testing Foreign Citizens in Russian at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, which has been appointed responsible for the methodological training of state testers. - When preparing Russian language tests for citizenship, we compared similar tests from different countries and found that they usually require a level of knowledge approximately equivalent to the first level according to the ALTE classification. This is the lowest of all certification levels, but higher than the elementary and basic levels of language proficiency. It allows a person to solve everyday communication tasks using limited language means while feeling comfortable.”
Citizenship tests in different countries have their own features. For example, in the United Kingdom, future citizens are required to have a level of language proficiency even higher than the first certification level. In Italy and Germany, the testing level for citizenship is lower than the first certification level. “When compiling citizenship tests, we also decided to focus on the first certification level,” Dyakonov continues. - This was easy to do because the corresponding testing criteria had already been developed in Russia. In principle, foreign students who completed a preparatory faculty received such a level of language knowledge.”
Even a cursory look at the trial version of the test for future citizens of Russia is enough to see that in one year students of preparatory faculties indeed learned a lot. The long columns of declensions and conjugations, which many still associate with language learning, are no longer in vogue. The compilers have included as many diverse situations as possible that a person constantly encounters in practice. Buying plane tickets, customs situations, interviews with employers, dialogues on transport and over the phone are not a complete list of tasks that a citizenship candidate will have to go through to prove their language competence.
A special section of the testing is listening tasks. The candidate will have to listen to snippets of announcements, news fragments, weather forecasts, and quickly choose the correct answer options. Even test reading is not routine at all, but a variety of advertising texts, announcements, instructions for using medicine, an excerpt from the Constitution, and a rather complex text on the history of Moscow. “No one will require a word-for-word translation from the test taker, and it does not matter if they encounter unfamiliar words,” says Svetlana Kostina, one of the authors and compilers, a teacher at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia. - You just need to understand the general meaning of the text and choose an answer option.”
The most difficult section of the test is the lexical-grammatical one. Perhaps many of those who today have Russian citizenship, live and work in Russia, but do not consider Russian their native language, would get tangled up in choosing the correct cases and prefixes. If we take into account that not only future students, engineers, or doctors but also those commonly called low-skilled labor will have to undergo testing for citizenship, we should conclude that potential citizens will have to sharply raise their educational level, or they risk remaining foreigners in Russia forever.
A session for migrantsThe test compilers approached their work conscientiously: the task situations are indeed taken from life. For example, in a sample test scenario of an interview with an employer, an experienced truck driver applies for a driver's position, but then agrees to go as a general laborer because he desperately needs money. If we set aside hypocrisy, we must admit that migrants today are needed in Russia primarily for low-skilled and low-paid jobs. The demographic situation is such that by 2006-2010 Russia will need a million new workers a year. "At the same time, most of them will have to work with their hands," believes Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya, chair of the Independent Research Council on Migration of the CIS and Baltic Countries, head of the Laboratory for Analysis and Forecast of Population Migration at the Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "In our country, three-quarters of the workforce is still engaged in manual labor, and there is no way around it."
The Russian experience is by no means the first. Many European countries went through something similar in connection with the birth rate crisis 30-40 years ago, when the first eastern quarters were just appearing in their capitals. The level of language knowledge of the then "newcomers to Europe" was quite low. Only much later, having restructured their industry and no longer needing a massive influx of labor, did European countries begin to impose a serious "language requirement" on candidates for citizenship. In this context, it seems premature for Russia to turn up its nose and raise language requirements. Waves of labor migrants are still ahead. However, no one obliges a worker from neighboring states to obtain citizenship: he can quite work on a temporary visa or registration, remaining a citizen of his country. But if his plans include obtaining the right to permanent residence in Russia and becoming its citizen, he will be obliged to do everything to overcome the language barrier.
No one doubts that one must prepare specially for language testing for citizenship. Different countries approach this problem differently. Holland, for example, organizes free courses for those who wish. In France, this matter remains the concern of the immigrant himself. Russian language tests are no exception. The compilers admit that the sample test released recently, if it can be considered as an aid for preparing for the test, then only for an experienced teacher who, guided by the tasks, can adjust the lesson program accordingly. If the knowledge level of a citizenship candidate is initially weak, he will not be able to cope on his own even with the expanded collection of sample test models that Russian language specialists at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia plan to prepare to help those taking the test.
So, like it or not, a candidate for Russian citizenship must prepare for lessons with a teacher. Naturally, at his own expense. How long the lessons may last and how much it will cost the student can only be estimated approximately. "Everything depends on the student's initial level, his abilities and determination," says Nikolai Isaev, head of the test control department at the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute. "But from my own experience, I know that you can reach a decent level in no less than six months of intensive study. Most likely even a year."
The average cost of Russian as a foreign language lessons in Moscow is well known. It is approximately $100 per month. To the payment for months of diligent study, one should add the standard cost of testing for the first certification level - $60. And this, as they say, is without guarantees: you might not pass the test as a result. The most interesting thing is that a candidate who fails the test tasks and is refused citizenship on this basis can claim that he was treated unlawfully. Because Presidential Decree No. 1325 speaks of a certificate confirming knowledge of the Russian language "in an amount not lower than the basic level," and this level is significantly lower than the first certification level taken as a basis by the test compilers.
So disputes about testing are not over yet. However, those for whom the language question is about to move into the practical sphere are already beating a path to the relevant universities. "The other day Tajik people, looking like market traders, came to us at RUDN," says Svetlana Kostina. "We spoke with them, of course, in Russian. We showed them the tests. The lexical and grammatical tasks frankly frightened them. I explained that the testing does not require correct answers to all questions. It is enough to score 65% correct answers. But they will still need preparation for the test. There is no doubt about that." It remains to hope that the first experiments with testing for admission to Russian citizenship will go well. Future citizens of the Russian Federation must demonstrate worthy abilities in the Russian language. There is no other way.