Dr Olga Sobolev CMK. C614 and Mrs Natalia Bershadski

150 hours including self-study (16+), Four/five years at secondary school level (under 16), good pass in GCSE (grades A-B). For all students who aim to reach intermediate/advanced level of proficiency in Russian.

Course Aim: To bring students’ knowledge of written and spoken Russian up to higher intermediate/advanced level. To develop an ability to communicate effectively in Russian (using high-frequency vocabulary and structures) in a variety of social situations. To establish linguistic skills and attitudes required for promoting and facilitating further study of Russian. To bring the students to level B1 of CEFR. Communicative Content: The course is focused on the following aspects: linguistic implications and use of the subjunctive and conditional modes; mastering a broader range of vocabulary; performing a variety of tasks in a wider range of factual, persuasive and expressive language contexts; combining and recombining language elements to accomplish tasks; reviewing and analysing key issues within a topic studied; summarising the main ideas of a short document in a target language. Structural Content: The course covers a wide range of vocabulary required for communicative functions and focuses on the following linguistic structures: aspects of verbs; comparative and superlative adjectives and adverbs; negative and indefinite adverbs; subjunctive mood; participles and gerunds; compound sentences & syntactic structures. The command in these areas is expected to be appropriate to the level and task with the emphasis on active usage.

12 hours of classes in the MT. 20 hours of classes in the LT. 8 hours of classes in the ST.

This is a 40 hour-course. Please refer to the LSE timetable for course teaching arrangements.

Course Book: S. Le Fleming & S. E. Kay, Colloquial Russian 2, Routledge 2003. Additional: Grammar: Terence Wade, A Comprehensive Russian Grammar, Blackwell, 2000. T.R. Beyer, 501 Russian Verbs, 2007. Dictionary: Oxford Russian Dictionary, eds M.Wheeler, B. Unbegaun & D. Thompson, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.

Continuous assessment (50%) in the MT, LT and ST.
Oral examination (30%) in the LT and ST.
In class assessment (20%) in the LT.