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Goals of the Fourth Year Russian Courses

Textbooks

102A. Family in Contemporary Russia
Textbook: "I Am. You Are. He Is" by Viktoria Tokareva (a reader with exercises)

102B. The Individual and the State.
Textbook:"Sofia Petrovna" (novella) by Lidia Chukovskaya. A student's edition with exercises, NY: Focus Publishers, 2000
On-line glossary for "Sofia Petrovna" Sofia Petronva read by Nelya Dubrovich

102C. Growing up in Russia
Textbook: A Reader that includes both 19th and 20th century texts, fiction and non-fiction.

102D. Geography, History, Demography, Social Issues.
Emphasis on social science terminology.

Goals of the Fourth Year Russian Courses

The main goal of the 102 series is to allow each participant to improve his or her language ability. A fourth year class typically brings together people of different language background and experience. Students will not be compared with each other, and the only measuring stick of success will be your own progress.

1. Grammar: Emphasis on sentence structure, punctuation, aspect and word order. By fourth year Russian, you have probably studied all of the major topics in the Russian grammar and will know which of them present a difficulty; thus, the choice of grammar topics will be discussed with the class.

2. Speaking: The class is conducted entirely in Russian. You are encouraged to express yourselves in Russian at all times since you need to 'try out' new words and expressions in order to learn how to make your meaning clear. It's better to attempt saying something and make a mistake than say nothing and miss a chance to engage in a meaningful exchange of ideas and get practice and feedback.

3. Listening: Films and videos thematically connected with the reading.

4. Reading: Literary and non-literary texts, analysis and discussion of language and cultural significance.

5. Writing: Essays and translations. Practicing paragraph length discourse. Special attention will be paid to complex sentences and sentence connectors (subordinating as well coordinating conjunctions).

6. Culture: Understanding Russian culture is an important part of the course. Readings and films have been selected with the goal of enhancing students' understanding of Russian life in the 20th century and the underlying Russian culture.

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