Dr Olga Sobolev C614 and Mrs Natalia Bershadski C614

For all students who aim to reach advanced/proficiency command of Russian.

Language skills and knowledge of Russian at the A2/B1 level of the Common European Reference Framework for Languages

Participants should also:

• demonstrate commitment to regular attendance, completion of homework and all assessments
• dedicate at least two hours per week for coursework in addition to classes.

All students  must gain permission of the tutor in the Needs Analysis Interview to take this course.

Course Aims:

• To develop the ability to use Russian effectively for purposes of practical communication in familiar contexts
• To establish the skills, language and attitudes required to promote and facilitate further study of Russian
• To improve the pronunciation of Russian sounds and sentence intonation
• To improve reading comprehension, oral and listening skills as well as written communication
• To improve accuracy in using inflexions, gender and word-order in sentences.
• To enable students to follow and discuss social, political and economic issues related to Russian-speaking countries at a basic to intermediate language level
• To bring students to level B1/B2 CEFR

Communicative Content:

• Talking and writing about past events and experiences.
• Talking and writing about jobs and professions.
• Asking for and giving advice.
• Talking and writing about future plans.
• Describing the behaviour of people.
• Talking and writing about cultural and social events.
• Expressing your personal opinion in discussions and arguments

Structural Content: The course covers a wide range of vocabulary required for communicative functions and focuses on the following linguistic structures (the command in these areas is expected to be appropriate to the level and task with the emphasis on active usage):

• Improving the contextual understanding and use of the basic  grammatical structures:
• Negative and indefinite adverbs;
• Subjunctive mood;
• Participles and gerunds;
• Compound sentences & syntactic structures.

16 hours of classes in the MT. 22 hours of classes in the LT. 2 hours of classes in the ST.

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

Svetlana Le Fleming & Susan Kay, Colloquial Russian 2, Routledge 2003/2015 ISBN: 978-1138960190.

• Terence Wade, A Comprehensive Russian Grammar, Blackwell, 2010, ISBN: 978-1405136396 
• T.R. Beyer, 501 Russian Verbs, 2008, ISBN: 978-0764137433 
• Nicholas Rzhevsky, Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture, Cambridge University Press, 2012, ISBN: 978-0521175586

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