Letter to all TRKI candidates for 2015 at the Russian Language Centre I am writing to you with updated information about the TRKI (Tests of Russian as a Foreign Language) held at the Russian Language Centre each year. As you may be aware, we have been running these tests since 2010 through an agreement with the Centre for International Education at Moscow State University (also, confusingly, called the Centre for Russian Language and Culture, and the Training and Testing Language Centre for Foreigners). This year we have been informed that the TRKI testing structure at Moscow State University (Moskovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet, or MGU) is undergoing ‘reorganisation’. One result of this is that the certificate awarded by our partners at MGU will no longer be a state TRKI certificate, but a Moscow State University certificate instead. You can read more about this on the website of our MGU partners http://russian-test.com/eng/tests/torfl. As far as we can tell, the only practical consequence of this might be for students who are planning to sit First Certificate Level (B1 – the third level after Elementary and Basic) specifically in order to enter a Russian university. For these people it is possible that they will require a state TRKI certificate rather than the certificate awarded by Moscow State University. As far as the tests themselves are concerned, there will be no difference between the MGU tests and the TRKI tests. The preparation materials are the same (indeed, most of them are authored by our partners at MGU), and the actual papers will be the same as those used for the TRKI. The external examiner, who conducts the speaking tests, will also be the same person who has conducted the TRKI tests here for the last 5 years. All the information on our website relating to TRKI therefore applies equally to the MGU tests. If you have any questions about this, please do get back to me at the normal RLC email address, [email protected]. Frank Althaus Director