http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1846648

Russian: An Active Introduction

The Active Introduction is one of the modules in an array of materials used in Russian training for beginners at the Foreign Service Institute. It is essentially a catalog of sentences relating to typical daily activities which can be combined to form different communication sequences in dialog form. Students learn to speak Russian through engaging in a running dialog with a teacher as a communication sequence unfolds. It is expected that the teacher will control the sequence at first and that as the students' mastery develops, they will assume more control. The book is used in conjunction with a table-top city model on which activities are demonstrated and imitated. Instructions are given for the construction of such a model. The central goal in developing the material was to make possible the formation of natural sequences, and therefore the grammar features occuring in the sentences derive from the choice of what is to be communicated rather than from an inventory of preselected items to be covered. This method is intended as an alternative to a traditional structure-based, "one-textbook" approach. In any given sentence, some of the grammatical patterns partially exemplified in it are expanded, others are considered for the moment as isolated items to be learned in that context only. (Author/AM).

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