Penza, 1 March 2016. PenzaNews. The Penza Belinsky library will be holding the preparation courses for the people seeking to take part in the Total Dictation initiative. The studies begin on Saturday, March 5.

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The first lession of the course begins at 13.00.

The studies for people seeking to take upon the dictation test will be held every week, with the final lesson scheduled on April 9.

“These studies cannot be classified as lectures or practical lessons. Together with the course students, Lyudmila Guryanova, professor of the Russian and Methods of Teaching Russian Department at the Faculty of History, Languages and Literature in the Belinsky Pedagogical Institute of the Penza State University, will analyze excerpts from literary works, renew the rules of orthography and punctuation,” Tatyana Mikhaylova, Penza region coordinator of the Total Dictation initiative, told PenzaNews.

Each test taker is required to have a pen and a notepad handy, she added.

This year’s Total Dictation – a big initiative aimed at promoting Russian literacy worldwide – will be held on April 16.

The 2015 initiative, which had taken place on April 18, encompassed six continents, 60 countries and 500 cities.

The board of experts in the Penza region, which featured PSU Russian Language Department professors, had checked 283 dictation papers. 17 of them received the highest grade, which was three times more than the countrywide average ratio.