All faculty members of the Russian language department at the University of Tsukuba, led by the NipCA project faculty and staff, delivered presentations at the 3rd Research Meeting of the Japanese Association for Studies in Russian Language Education, held at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies on December 3, 2023. The titles and presenters are outlined below:
Title: “Exploring New Possibilities for Russian Language Training and Study Abroad: The Case of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan”
Presenters: Toshinobu Usuyama, Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences
Yuji Kajiyama, UIA, Student Affairs, Part-time Lecturer of the Russian Language
Yukako Tokuda, Part-time researcher, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences
Yurinobu Kato, Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences
Yukiko Yamamoto, Associate Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences
Asuka Mitsui, part-time lecturer of the Russian Language
This report introduced the University of Tsukuba’s partner universities and overseas offices in the former Soviet Union. It highlighted three major projects: the University of Tsukuba Ge-NIS Program (Russia), the Project to Promote Cooperation among Overseas Centers for Japanese Studies (Russia and CIS), and the Nippon Foundation Central Asia-Japan Human Resources Development Project (NipCA). Additionally, the report explained the Nippon Foundation’s Project for the Development of Japanese Human Resources in Central Asia (NipCA) and detailed the research and educational activities TUFS has undertaken in Russian-speaking countries.
With Japanese universities currently halting dispatches to Russia in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, the language training programs provided by the University of Tsukuba in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where Russian is the official language, hold significant potential. In the report, by analyzing the questionnaires and reports from participants in these training programs conducted by the University of Tsukuba in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan this year (for the first time in several years since the Corona Disaster), the authors derived five possibilities: rediscovery of the value of Russian language, discovery of the value of local languages, possibility of multi-language education, possibility of forming domestic student networks, and possibility of using platform universities for study abroad.
The NipCA project is not only set to continue conducting training programs in the Central Asian region but will also collaborate in sending students to Japanese universities. Simultaneously, it aims to disseminate research results with a focus on Russian language and local language education.
