Information about preparations for the GCSE in Russian

Dear Parents of the students who wish to take Russian GCSE exams next year,

We now have 2 types of students enrolling for the exam: (i) those who speak Russian well, want to polish their skills, and find about the format of exam, and (ii) those who are learning Russian as a foreign language and who require more preparations to pass the exam successfully.

At the moment they all study in the same group, which is not very efficient for either the teacher or the students. Thus, from the next academic year on, we are planning to implement the following scheme.

At the end of the current academic year, we shall offer a mock exam to all the current students. Based on its results, we’ll form two groups as follows:

Group 1 – for the students whose level of Russian is already proficient; in this group, they will work on further enhancement of their linguistic skills, and also on more demanding exam topics;

Group 2 – for the students who can be qualified as studying Russian as a foreign language level and who require more work on their vocabulary, grammar, spelling, and fluency. The duration of this course will be two years. Having said that, we will be able to take accept certain students on this course for shorter periods of time too, but we would like to stress that a longer course would be highly advisable in order to succeed.

Also, we would like to ask you to bear in mind that the GCSE course does not finish after the exams but continues till the end of the school year, as the ultimate goal of any learning is not to pass a test for the sake of it, but to improve one’s skills and enrich one’s knowledge.

Please note that, starting from the next academic year, we will not enroll any external candidates for these exams – but only the students of our School.

We would be grateful if you could let us know, as soon as possible your plans regarding your son’s/daughter’s upcoming GCSE exams.