Sissoko Aminata is a fourth-year student at Penza State University, the Faculty of History, Languages and Literature, the Institute of Teacher Education.

Aminata arrived in Penza from Mali and chose Linguistics as a major (profile “Theory and Practice of Intercultural Communication”, which is implemented at the department “Russian as a Foreign Language”).

The student showed a high level of proficiency in Russian and became the silver medalist of the International Digital Student Contest in Russian “Homo dicens”.

The Contest was held by the Moscow City Department of Education and the Moscow Pedagogical State University.

The PSU student was trained for the Contest Tatyana Kolyuzhko, a senior teacher at the department "Russian as a Foreign Language".

Having lost less than one point to the leader of the Contest - a student from China, the representative of our University shared the second place with a student from Uzbekistan. The third place was taken by students from China, India and Turkmenistan.

The International Russian Language Contest was held on the distance platform of Moscow Pedagogical State University from January 10 to March 1, 2020. During this time, more than 500 participants from around the world joined the digital competition. After the qualifying stage, about 100 students from 14 countries of Europe, Asia, Africa and South America were qualified for the main round.

According to the organizers, the Contest is aimed at popularizing the Russian language and culture, as well as strengthening and developing international cooperation in the field of higher education and updating actual values that are preserved and retransmitted by the Russian culture.

Under the terms of the 3rd round of the Contest, winners and prize-winners received an invitation to speak at the student online conference “Homo dicens”, which was held on April 18 on the digital platform of Moscow Pedagogical State University.

Sissoko Aminata made a presentation on “National and cultural features of phraseological units with a zoononym component in Russian and Bambara” (supervisor - Irina Krylova, candidate of philological sciences, associate professor). The presentation by the student from Mali aroused keen interest of the participants of the section. The Contest organizers thanked our student for participating in the conference and noted excellent knowledge of the Russian language.

Speaking about the choice of PSU for her training, Aminata Sissoko emphasizes that studying in Russia is her goal. “We consider it prestigious to have a Russian education, and Penza State University is one of the best universities in Russia, so my choice was obvious,” says the student from Mali.

“This is my first Russian Language Contest. I decided to take part in it to try my hand and show a decent level of the Russian language proficiency. It was a very interesting experience for me! The very level of organization of the Contest was really pleasing. All students were worthy adversaries. Speaking about the Russian language itself and its difficulties, for me grammar is a nightmare, especially cases”, says Aminata.