Stay in good shape!

Total dictation as a means to prevent entropy and procrastination

Last Saturday, April 16, I came to the Russian State University for the Humanities to write “Total Dictation” (www.totaldict.ru), as they say, “live”: in a real classroom with a lectern and desks, among interested people of all ages. There was a slight excitement in the air, which our wonderful “dictator”, rock musician Sergei Galanin, very opportunely diluted with life stories and witty remarks. It was a real immersion into student life - even if only for 1.5 hours, but so many emotions!

After the emotions subsided, I thought that “Total Dictation” was an excellent reason to keep myself “on my toes.” We go to the dentist at least once a year, or adhere to some kind of diet, or go to the gym - in a word, we take some measures against entropy. Why not check your literacy from time to time, just like an athlete checks the condition of his muscles before a marathon? By the way, this year some of my friends really prepared for the dictation like a marathon, attending special courses on difficult cases of grammar and punctuation. I think they are great guys. It is impossible to learn a rule once and become literate for the rest of your life, just as you cannot pump up your abs once and relax, believing that now no cinnamon rolls are scary for you.

And in connection with this wonderful event on April 16, I remembered one long-ago Dictation, the consequences of which could really become total - at least for us, then still first-year students of the Faculty of Philology. Namely: those who failed were promised to be expelled and anathematized. Teachers are fed up with our widespread illiteracy. It was decided to conduct a control check that would show the real situation in our group.

The group was indeed quite interesting: the majority were exemplary graduates who passed the Unified State Exam in Russian and Literature with an “A”, but there were also bad graduates who ended up in the philology department only because “it just happened that way” (in some places they didn’t pass the competition, in others it was significantly more expensive than in the philology department). In general, there were only a few students who breathed love for the Russian language and dreamed of becoming philologists. And some boys simply “turned over” with us so that they would not be drafted into the army. There is nothing surprising in this, however: it was 2003 (!), when the Unified State Exam had not yet become mandatory throughout the country, and some universities completely refused it, accepting only classical exams. But in our Samara region we have always loved educational experiments, and therefore all schoolchildren, as one, were actively preparing for the Unified State Exam.

I remember how unconcealedly horrified the teachers were from us, the “Unified State Examination” philologists. We heard a lot during the first six months of study: that if it weren’t for the Unified State Exam, none of us would have entered, that one cannot be called a philologist who writes so illiterately, is not interested in anything, it’s a disgrace, a nightmare of the faculty, etc. And then in the second semester the Dictation began. They gave such a complex text, “for all the rules at once,” that there were no A’s after it. What kind of fives are there: only two fours for the most meticulous nerds, a couple more random threes, the rest - twos and colas. It seems like I got a D, which means about five to seven mistakes. Five to seven errors in the dictation text were enough for all my USE A's and regional Olympiads to turn into nothing!!! To be honest, I didn’t expect that there would be so many gaps in my knowledge! And no one expected, neither from ourselves, nor from anyone, much less, that our group would fall into such a pinch. Still, it seems like it’s customary to consider freshmen as bunnies and forgive them in every possible way. “Yeah, right now.” And so our group of “under-philologists” plunged into depression, and the teachers began to think deeply - it’s impossible to expel so many people. But you can’t continue to move along the program, because, it’s clear, with such monstrous gaps in knowledge, these students will simply disappear in the jungle of “adult” linguistic programs.

A solution was found very soon: we were recommended to attend literacy courses without fail. Or reconsider your desire to continue studying at the philology department. So after the main lectures, we, like dear little ones, went to an elective class twice a week, where we were dealt with complex cases of spelling and punctuation using the school reference book.

However, the teachers did not long celebrate their moral victory over the careless “underphilologists.” Literacy courses, for all their obvious advantages, had one significant disadvantage - they were made payable. Not very expensive, but paid. And if at first the scandal that thundered throughout the entire department was only floating over our heads - they say, these are the ignoramuses who have crept into our penates, we exposed them! - then very soon this formidable element unfolded and boomeranged through the teachers. No one knew what exactly happened, but they say that someone’s parents complained directly to the rector. Like, we already pay a lot of money to teach our children, and now they demand even more from us, on what grounds?! And if you close your eyes to the teachers’ mental pain, there were essentially no objective grounds. So what if students don’t remember school punctuation rules? Did they pass the exams? Passed. Have you entered the faculty? We got in, even the first session was closed. Well, the fact that the first session revealed a critical number of bugs should no longer concern the parent wallet. It looks like the department is trying to make money from careless students, which, of course, is unacceptable. This is generally beyond good and evil!

And very soon an order came from above to make the courses free, so as not to outrage the public. But there were no volunteers to eliminate our illiteracy for free - with all the desire to have only excellent students, the department could not pay the teacher for additional hours. So we finished studying about a month and a half after we started, essentially having sorted out only those mistakes that were in the Dictation. No one was expelled, no one was killed. Everyone who wanted to draw conclusions at their own expense or at the expense of their desk neighbor. And we began to live and live well, and with almost the same composition of “well done” and “bad guys” we slowly reached the fifth year.

And yet, I personally recovered from this offensive title of “underphilologist”, once abandoned in my hearts, only a few years after graduating from university. It took quite a lot of time and different situations, which taught me to treat knowledge not as an obligation, to literacy - not as something unattainable, but to the Russian language - with respect and, dare I say it, love. (The books of K.I. Chukovsky, for example, helped me a lot in this.) However, this, as they say, is a completely different story.