Russia: Languages Still Popular Despite Economic Crisis

[Harold Schiffman]

 Forwarded From:  edling at lists.sis.utsa.edu


The St. Petersburg Times



Languages Still Popular Despite Economic Crisis



Despite the difficult financial situation, many of St. Petersburg's
residents have not given up learning foreign languages, though the
number of foreign students studying Russian in the city has
significantly dropped, according to the directors of some of the
city's language schools.



Yelena Mikhalyova, director of the city's International Language
Academy (ILA), said the crisis has so far had a minimal impact on her
school.



"We haven't seen an outflow of our current students, but we have
observed a decrease in new students by about 10-15 percent," she said.



Mikhalyova said the decrease of new students was most noticeable in
January, when people seemed to be seriously worried by media reports
about the crisis. However, the situation has already begun to improve
this month, she said.



Full story:

http://www.times.spb.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=28351





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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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