Tanya Lipatova

• MA in Russian Language and Literature
• MA in Classics (St. Petersburg, Russia)

Tanya graduated from Saint Petersburg University (formerly Leningrad State University) in 1987.

In 1991, she started teaching Russian Language at the Brasshouse Center for modern languages, Birmingham. From 1992, she commenced teaching as a Language Assistant in the Russian Department at the University of Birmingham. She also worked at the University’s specialized language teaching centre – the Centre for Modern Languages - from 1993-2003. She joined CREES as a Russian Language Tutor in 2004.

Tanya worked on producing examination papers in collaboration with Asset Languages, the assessment scheme developed by Cambridge Assessment through OCR and Cambridge ESOL as part of the National Languages Strategy 

Tanya Lipatova teaches Russian at CREES from ab initio to advanced level with particular emphasis on written Russian at undergraduate level (Essay courses) and on oral Russian at postgraduate level (CP4 Advanced Oral Russian). The CP4 module for postgraduate students helps them to acquire language proficiency adequate for active use in field research and communication with Russian specialists in their respective fields.

Aside from her duties of a Personal Tutor, Tanya’s main admin role is a Welfare Tutor in CREES. Her responsibilities as a Welfare Tutor include: co-ordination of the student support system within the department, liaising with the University Central Support Services, providing consultation to Personal Tutors and students, seeing students who experience academic and personal problems and contributing to the University-wide Welfare Tutor Forum

Tanya’s main area of interest is methodology of teaching Russian language to foreign students. During her working career she has attended numerous courses on language teaching methods and techniques that were organised by various language teaching bodies and establishments. These courses provided an invaluable opportunity to learn about new / modern ways of delivering language teaching in a class.

Tanya has also attended seminars run by The Pushkin Institute in Moscow. The most recent seminar, in February 2009, was devoted to “methods of teaching the Russian language in non-Russian speaking countries”. The seminar was set to give a rare opportunity for language tutors from all over the world to learn about new and advanced teaching methods that were currently being practiced in other countries. The seminar comprised the following activities: 1) lectures on specifics of teaching Russian abroad; 2) master-classes devoted to teaching the language to students of different levels and with various educational backgrounds; 3) round tables on innovative techniques of foreign language teaching ; 4) an exhibition of newly published Russian language textbooks and presentations on some of them.

While working for CML (Centre for Modern Languages, University of Birmingham), Tanya contributed to creating Teacher Training Materials for DOPLA (Development of Postgraduate and Language Assistants) in Language Teaching

Other professional appointments

• Member of The Higher Education Academy