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World: Mandarin to become elective college exam in Russia

Russia's national college entrance exam will soon include Mandarin as an elective foreign language, according to an announcement by Sergey Kravtsov, vice minister of education and science of the Russian Federation last week. Russia's Education Supervision Bureau will include Mandarin in the final exam for ninth-graders this year, and for 11th-graders in their college entrance exam by 2020. The study of Mandarin has grown in tandem with increasing cooperation in trade and economics between China and Russia. The number of Mandarin learners in Russia has grown from 17,000 in 2007 to 56,000 in 2017, according to a survey of a regional research center of linguistics in Russia.