West Kirby pupil teaches herself A-Level Russian

Oct 15 2008 by Matt Hurst, Birkenhead News

katie sykes

A WEST Kirby Grammar pupil has finished among the top 10 in the country for GCE Russian and will now teach herself up to A-Level.

Katie Sykes, 17, has no Russian background or any connection with the country, but opted to tackle the Slavonic language because she thinks its “culture and history are really amazing”.

Her only exposure to the former Soviet giant came on a school exchange in Year 11 when she visited Yaroslavl, a city around 150 miles north east of Moscow.

Katie told the News: “I was hardly fluent at that time but it was really useful spending two weeks immersed in the culture.”

And such is the West Kirby girl’s fascination with the place, she has even started teaching her 13-year-old sister the language.

Katie said: “We speak Russian to each other sometimes, in a very basic way, but she’s picked up a few words.”

A Slavonic language, Russian uses an entirely different alphabet to other European languages, like French, Spanish and English, all of which share Latin roots.

Despite its relative obscurity as a school subject in the UK – only 549 candidates sat the GCE exam – Russian is actually Eurasia’s most geographically widespread language, with more than 142 million speakers at the last count.

And Katie, who is also preparing for her piano grade eight exam alongside playing the cello, hopes to tap into this by taking a job with the Foreign Office.

She plans to study French and Russian at Cambridge University but must first negotiate her A-Level alone, after the only other girl studying with her dropped out.

She will receive two hours teaching support a week from the school.

Katie added: “I think the whole history of Russia is about trying to decide if it’s east or west.

“A lot of what’s happening now is Russia asserting its own importance against the west and drawing back towards the east. But it’s really complicated.”