Careful attention is paid to pronunciation in class activities. Students go through a very rapid review of the first few chapters of Golosa Volume 1 and spend most of their time during the summer focusing on Volume 2 of this textbook, as well as selected chapters from V puti and supplementary materials. Basic Intermediate Russian Zaitsev and Staff Students in this class generally have had at least 90 hours of formal classroom instruction in Russian. In this class they review the basic grammatical and syntactical structures of the Russian language and improve their mastery of this foundation of the language while acquiring an active vocabulary of approximately 1,500 words. During class, students act out scenes from the video soap opera on which the textbook is based.
Careful attention is paid to pronunciation in classroom activities.
Advanced Intermediate Russian Rifkin and Staff Students in this class generally have had at least 200 hours of formal classroom instruction in Russian. In this class they review the basic grammatical and syntactical structures of the Russian language and focus their attention on more challenging structures of the language such as participles, comparatives, verbs of motion. At the end of the summer students in this class typically have an active vocabulary approaching 2,000 words and demonstrate advanced level listening and reading skills. The class features lectures on a variety of topics in the second half of the summer and students understand these lectures without significant difficulties. Readings for the class include poetry, short stories, and a contemporary Russian murder mystery, as well as newspaper articles.