In December 2022, IITU experts continued to comment on the lessons posted on the Akelius educational platform.

There are currently 6 levels available on the Akelius platform: A0, A1, A1.1, A2, B0, and B1. Using this platform, as part of a pilot project, teachers from nine schools in Kazakhstan conduct classes. A joint project with UNICEF, Akelius and IITU aims to help children in difficult life situations improve their literacy and digital skills.

Methodological expert, Candidate of Philological Sciences, Assistant Professor of the Department of Languages at IITU Yevgeniy Yuryevich Medvedev shared what kind of comments he and his colleagues receive from the course developers.

For example, in the phrase «Когда цветок раскрывается, то он расцветает» (“When a flower opens, it blooms,”) the construction of the sentence does not correspond to its meaning.

“Firstly, the construction КОГДА… ТО… (WHEN ... THEN ...) is used extremely rarely in Russian. If you need to specify a condition, use ЕСЛИ…, ТО… (IF ..., THEN ...) . If you need to indicate the time, use КОГДА …, ТОГДА … (WHEN ..., THEN ...) . Or the word ТОГДА (THEN) can be removed altogether: WHEN ..., .... Secondly, the construction used in this example implies that we are talking about different actions occurring simultaneously. For example: "Когда цветок раскрывается, он начинает источать аромат” ( "When a flower opens, it begins to exude fragrance.") Or: "Когда цветок раскрывается, к нему начинают прилетать пчёлы" ("When a flower opens, bees begin to fly to it."). However, in this example, the meaning of the sentence is to explain some kind of action (opens = blooms). These are NOT different actions, but different designations for the same action. To do this, you need to use a different sentence structure: X means Y. “Opening means blooming”, Evgeny Yuryevich explains.

In addition, he recommends replacing some of the examples with the word "try."

“In the sentence "Дети пытаются складывать числа на уроке математики" ('Children are trying to add numbers in math class'), it is better to replace the verb with "учатся" ('learning'), and in the sentence "Я пытаюсь приехать в школу пораньше" ('I'm attempting to get to school early') with "стараюсь" “I’m trying”. The phrase about the teacher "Я пытаюсь объяснять свой предмет" ("I'm trying to explain my subject") seems inappropriate,” the expert comments.

Experts send their comments to developers through the Trello service. This allows to find and correct technical, linguistic, grammatical, cultural and other errors.

A joint project with Akelius and UNICEF has been implemented in Kazakhstan since autumn 2021. By the time the project is completed, 250 children are expected to be trained on the Akelius platform, and the blended language learning methodology will become an example for literacy in other subjects and teaching in a digital environment.