Tasks for the national Olympiad in the Russian language for school students: content selection and skills requirements

The present paper aims to describe approaches to the content selection of the tasks used in the regional and final stages of the Olympiad in the Russian language. The issue regarding the correlation between the existing documents that prescribe the content of education on the one hand and the requirements for holding the regional and final stages of the national Olympiad in Russian for school students on the other is treated as relevant in this study. The performed analysis of the methodological guidelines for holding the school and municipal stages of the national Olympiad for school students in combination with the examination of the codifiers employed to develop testing and assessment materials for learners’ final assessment allowed the authors to identify the didactic units which are the elements to be tested. Moreover, the paper provides models for several tasks. These models permit achieving the objective of assessing learners’ knowledge and building their motivation for cognitive activity. It is concluded that the content of the tasks and the tested skills of school students participating in the national Olympiad in the Russian language completely satisfy the requirements specified in the documents which regulate the development of the testing and assessment materials for the state final certification in this subject. These tasks can be used by teachers not only as a resource to prepare students for the Olympiad, but also to motivate them to study Russian.