Rus': A Comprehensive Course in Russian (review)

As lecturers of Russian at the university level, Smyth and Crosbie wrote this book for foreign-language students who have no previous experience with Russian. It can be used in the classroom in both high schools and universities in order to reach an intermediate level, but it is not suitable for self-guided studies.

The book is organized into three parts. Part 1, the largest part of the book, contains the course materials. Following an introductory unit that covers the alphabet, pronunciation, word stress, and cursive writing in Cyrillic, the course is divided into twenty units. Each unit consists of a ‘classwork’ section, a homework section, and listening comprehension exercises. The classwork section offers short texts, dialogues, pictured stories, grammar tables, examples, pair-work exercises, and references to the audio material where applicable. The texts demonstrate the authors’ intercultural approach to language learning and teaching. Unfortunately, all of the illustrations and images are in black-and-white. The homework section encourages learners to delve more deeply into the classwork topics by asking students to produce short texts and fill in vocabulary gaps. Throughout the book, clearly defined symbols and icons simplify access to the different elements, aspects, and methods used in the teaching process.

Part 2, ‘Teacher’s guidelines’, offers some general background on how to teach a foreign language. A general introduction within this section defines the learner’s role and explains how to best make use of the textbook’s layout. A second section then outlines the methodology behind language teaching in general, with reference to the overall structure and specific units of this textbook. Part 2 closes with a two-page glossary of linguistic terms.

Finally, Part 3 consists of a number of study aids, including a language awareness section that offers insight into the linguistic concepts covered by each unit, such as word classes, word order, and syntactic structures. There are also a grammar summary and a number of checklists which allow the learner to keep track of the capabilities they have achieved so far.

This textbook can be used without any other exercises or workbooks, but the supplementary audio material (cassettes or CDs) is necessary for adequate use of this course.