Dear Students,
As you will see on my syllabi, the textbook I have ordered for both 101 and 203 is Начало. This book has been much vilified by students and observers for its diffuseness and lack of apparent organization; the criticism is largely ignorant, even when it comes from those Russianists who do not themselves teach Russian. Nonetheless the criticism is not fully unjustified. Let me say just a few words.
For fifteen years we have not only been existing in post-Soviet history, but also in the 'communicative language-teaching era'. All, or many, or the majority, of the major textbooks for Russian, and many for a variety of other languages, including Czech, German, and others, look about the same: massive multi-moduled lessons with a spilling-out of contemporary photos, placards, social realia, aids and remarks in various type styles and a confusing array of video and audio aids. The instructor who knows that the real meat — grammar and vocabulary — is what's essential, not charming photos of well-known cathedrals, has to distill it himself as in an alembic.
My lesson plans are designed to burn off the crap and chaff and preserve the important materials, so that the student will do well to print out my handouts and follow my instructions closely. It will be well nigh impossible to actually find anything in this book, Начало, without my guide and index, and even then there are problems. One of the worst is that grammar is presented in stages from fuzzy to closer focus to near-to-complete, and the student neve knows where it started or ended. The justification for this is that this is how kids learn languages when they are thirteen months; but we adults are no longer so advantaged as to be one and a half. We have to ratiocinate. Chomsky said, with his usual penchant for sarcasm: "No one knows how to teach a language, so it is impossible. It has to be learned."
The first textbook I used at Tulane had no pictures and no realia. It had all the grammar and nothing but the grammar. Can you imagine how that book, no longer in print, would throw students into despair? I used that book, along with my own short stories, in Russian, to add some vocabulary spice. (The stories, Петя и Вера, presented a humble young mechanic in the Soviet Union who loved a snobbish, alcoholic, brilliant young woman who was a university student. She despised him but he loved her. There was a kind of pseudo-Tolstoyan glint in there, but not much else. I also wrote detective stories about Профессор Малышев, a university professor of Slavic who, in his spare time, solved murders.)
Those times have gone past, like the days of one's life, like so much used toilet paper, fluttering in the wind, glimpsed from the rear car of a passenger train. Nowadays we have to be, we want to be, we are — "communicative."
I do indeed believe in the use of the target language as much as possible in class, and students do want this too. It is a firm belief of mine that with a really good grammatical/lexical grounding in the university, one can get to fluency in-country much more rapidly than without. I know it in myself, and you, too will see that it works. But you need to follow my notes instead of despairing in the book. In 203 much of our work will be beyond, above and in other universes from that of "the book." Indeed, I must admit I have to work very hard to "learn a language' — a phrase with many faces — and I have always had trouble reaching true fluency. So I know from hard experience of failure.
The bright side is that you can do it, you are at least as talented as I, so you need only the motivation. Give me the suspension of disbelief, believe in my suggestions. This will be easy.
gmc
