BELARUS STATE
ECONOMIC UNIVERSITY

..20

French on business topics and without an accent

On April 4, the VIII Interuniversity Olympiad in Business and Economic French, annually organized by the Department of German and Romance Languages of the FMBK, ended as part of the Decade of Student Science "Youth in Science and Business" of the Belarusian State Economic University. Francophone students from three universities of the Republic of Belarus (BSU, BSEU, BSTU), as well as students from the Russian Federation (State Humanitarian and Technological University) took part in the 2023 Olympiad.

The Olympiad was held in two stages: written and oral, each of which involves competition in a certain set of competencies in the format of the DALF international French language exam and in accordance with the level of language proficiency C1-C2. The tasks of the written stage included testing language competencies based on reading comprehension and the ability to creatively interpret information to solve a non-standard professional task (preparing an announcement, service documentation, synthesizing a new written document based on several proposed ones, etc.). Contestants who scored more than 80 points in the first stage of the Olympiad were admitted to the second oral stage, during which it was proposed to prepare an oral presentation based on the video material presented, comment on it and extrapolate it to the economic environment of our country.

The creative tasks of both stages of the Olympiad were united this year with the theme “Économie circulaire et transition écologique = Circular economy as one of the directions of the green economy”. More than 60 students took part in the first correspondence round of the Olympiad, 16 of whom were invited to fight in the second round. The expert jury of the Olympiad represented by Marina Komarova, Head of the Department of German and Romance Languages of the FMBC BSEU, Olga Lapunova, Associate Professor of the Department of Romance Linguistics of the Belarusian State University, and Irina Panteleeva, Senior Lecturer of the Department of German and Romance Languages of the FMBC BSEU, noted that the contestants demonstrated a high level of knowledge of French for professional purposes. According to the participants, such competitions motivate and inspire to conquer new heights in mastering the French language, because by verifying their communicative competence in a competitive atmosphere, students can assess their own competitiveness and their competitive advantage, according to which a foreign language is one of the tools for realizing professional potential.

The winners of the 2023 Olympics are:

1st place - Segodnik Vitaly (BSEU, FMBC), Dasko Sofia (BSU, Faculty of Philology);
2nd place - Belkevich Yana (BSEU, FMBK), Temchur Maria (BSU, philological faculty), Alina Aleshnikova (BSU, FMO);
3rd place - Lada Yurkevich (BSEU, FMBC), Vladislava Yushkevich (BGU, Filovak), Artus Anastasia (BSTU).