Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

1. Communicate effectively in most interactions orally in a variety of predictable and unpredictable settings using a wide variety of vocabulary, the present, imperfective past and future tenses with excellent accuracy, perfective past tense and future tense aspect with good accuracy and all six grammatical cases with very good accuracy.
2. Write complex sentences, personal essays with several paragraphs, and story summaries using a wide variety of vocabulary, the present, imperfective and future tenses with excellent accuracy, perfective past tense and future tense aspect with good accuracy and all six grammatical cases with very good accuracy.
3. Identify culturally-grounded assumptions of one’s own culture and apply a basic understanding of Russian culture.
4. Describe and analyze, in depth, selected historical and cultural movements in the target culture through exposure to literature, art, music, film and/or performing arts in the target language.
5. Apply and analyze strategies, such as cognates, context, expanded roots, all parts of speech, and application of cultural knowledge, for understanding a wide variety authentic reading and listening materials in the target language with very good success.
6. Reflect on personal work or competencies to make connections between Russian language and culture and lived experience.

Students are expected to attend all classes, participate actively in classroom activities, and prepare oral and written homework assignments. Students may meet with the teacher in conferences. After the introduction to the course, Russian will be used in the classroom at all times. Students should plan to spend about hour in preparation and practice outside of class for each class hour.

1. Active participation in interactive class activities, including individual, pair or group activities
2. Frequent contextual written tasks (in or outside of class) to assess reading, writing, cultural and aural competencies
3. Oral interviews with instructor
4. In class, interactive student role-plays and other pair activities
5. Individual and partner presentations
6. Class discussions to enhance cultural awareness and knowledge
7. Self-reflection essays

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

Include all or most of the following:

1. Stating dates and years
2. Russian holiday traditions and greetings
3. Gift giving etiquette
4. Russian and Soviet historical events
5. Life event verbs
6. Russian wedding traditions
7. Uni-directional and multi-directional verbs of motion in past, present and future
8. Usage of uni-directional and multi-directional verbs of motion
9. Review of stating destination/location using accusative and prepositional cases
10. Stating destination/location at person’s house using dative and genitive cases
11. Stating откуда оrigin using genitive case
12. Environmental/social impact of driving in Russia
13. Travel and vacations
14. Prefixed verbs of motion formation and usage in past, present, and future
15. Prefixed verb of motion, prepositions and case governance
16. Describing direction and routes
17. Russian cartoon «Винни Пух идёт в гости»
18. Solutions to environmental/social issues of driving in Russia
19. Relative clauses with который-singlular and plural all cases
20. Formation and aspect usage of imperative verbs
21. Russian superstitions and folk beliefs
22. Making comparisons
23. Formation of regular and irregular comparative adjectives
24. Russian novella “Goluboe i zelyonoe”
25. Moscow in 1950’s
26. Soviet May Day traditions
27. Youth literature movement in Soviet literature

Competencies and Skills:

1. Manages increasingly detailed discussions about weekly schedule, holiday traditions, Russian and Soviet history, life events, wedding traditions, travel and vacations, environmental issues related to driving, superstitions, and narration of chapter events in Russian novella
2. Speaks in the present tense, imperfective past and future tenses with excellent accuracy and a greater range of verbs
3. Speaks using perfective past tense and future tense aspect with good accuracy
4. Speaks using the six cases with very good accuracy
5. Communicates effectively using some circumlocution and rephrasing
6. Comprehends normal rate native speech in contextual settings.

G.   Writes using detail and multiple paragraphs in a variety of time frames and modes and all six cases with very good accuracy.

1. Reads and understands the main ideas and details of more complex authentic texts including selected short stories and a short novella.
2. Uses increased contextual and linguistic clues to consistently deduce the meaning of new vocabulary with very good success
3. Recognizes and interprets cultural behaviors and attitudes pertaining to holiday traditions, Soviet and Russian historical events, wedding traditions, feminism, travel and vacationing, driving, and superstitions
4. Describes and analyzes, in depth, Russian novella «Голубое и зелёное»
5. Reflects on own progress and competencies