Spelling errors on the Unified State Exam 2026 in the Russian language are associated with weakening spelling vigilance and digital habits

Spelling errors on the Unified State Exam-2026 in the Russian language are associated with the weakening of schoolchildren’s spelling vigilance, active communication in instant messengers and the predominance of clip-based, navigational reading.

Russian language exam participants often made mistakes in spelling roots, prefixes and suffixes.

New approaches will help correct the situation: strengthening work with the morphemic structure of words, algorithmization of rules, conscious attitude to practices adopted in the digital environment.

MOSCOW, September 17 - RIA Novosti. Spelling errors on the Unified State Exam 2026 in the Russian language are associated with the weakening of schoolchildren’s spelling vigilance, active communication in instant messengers and the predominance of clip-based, navigational reading, RIA Novosti reported to RIA Novosti, Rector of the Moscow State Linguistic University Irina Kraeva.

FIPI began publishing methodological recommendations for teachers, prepared on the basis of an analysis of typical mistakes of participants in the 2026 Unified State Exam. RIA Novosti found that participants in the Russian language exam often made mistakes in the spelling of roots, prefixes and suffixes, in particular, graduates wrote “mentioned”, “help”, “create”, “priceless”, “daliye”, “heat”.

“From the point of view of modern linguodidactics, such errors reflect an insufficiently developed skill of morphemic analysis and a weakening/absence of spelling vigilance,” Kraeva said.

She noted that in the Russian language the leading principle is the morphological principle of spelling, which ensures the uniformity of spelling of morphemes regardless of phonetic changes, and it is its insufficient mastery that leads to massive errors in roots, prefixes and suffixes.

The situation, she says, is aggravated by the digital environment. Research from 2025–2026 associates the increase in spelling errors among schoolchildren with active communication in instant messengers and social networks, where phonetic spellings are normalized (as I hear and write), deliberate disregard of rules for the sake of speed, and the transfer of “chat norms” to educational texts.

“Fast,” clip-based, navigational reading predominates: the student scans the text, snatches out key words and facts, and reads less into the overall structure and details of the form, including spelling,” Kraeva emphasized.