The Total Dictation

Do you know about such a very interesting action, which is called The Total Dictation? 

The idea of the voluntary dictation for students was born in The Novosibirsky State University. The first dictation took place in 2004, and after that this event has happened every year. In 2009 organizers invited singer Psoy Korolenko to read a text. About 600 people participated in the action that year. In 2010 a lot of different organizations, for example, libraries, universities and schools joined the Dictation in Novosibirsk – all in all, almost 2500 people. The following years fans from different cities and towns joined the action. Nowadays The Total Dictation is written by thousands of people in Russia, USA, France, UK, etc., even on Arctic Stations and in spaceships.

Texts for the Dictation are written by modern Russian writers, such as Boris Strugatsky, Dmitry Bykov, Zakhar Prilepin, Dina Rubina, Alexey Ivanov. Nobody can see a text before the Dictation begins. Usually popular and well-known singers, actors, scientists, showmen, journalists become a Dictators – people, who read the text to the public.

The first Dictation in Saint-Petersburg was in 2012. The main writing-place is Saint-Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance. But this year a number of places increased. The philological faculty of Herzen State Pedagogical University wasn't an exception. I was fortunate to become a volunteer of The Total Dictation-2014 and I'd like to tell about this day.

My and other volunteers' main task was to prepare classrooms and to meet people. We prepared classrooms and put paper on the desks. It was about 2 p.m. when people began to come. Up to 3 p.m. our team was escorting the members to the auditoriums, helping them to find free places and so on. At 3 o'clock the Dictators came in and The Dictation began. As for dictators, there were an actress Svetlana Kruchkova, historian Leo Lurie, director Igor Shadhan and others. Fortunately, I had time to write the text. Honestly speaking, it wasn't very difficult. After the Dictation I took the papers away and gave them to the teachers, which were checking our dictations for several days. There were about 400 members.

The results are already known. As for me, I've got “4” - I did punctuational mistakes. I can't say I proud of myself, rather satisfied. To sum up, I can say that this day has remained in my mind forever. Moreover, I hope to participate in The Total Dictation-2015.