Dawson Clayton, Bidwell Charles, Humesky Assya (eds.) Modern Russian II

New York; Burlingame: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1965. — xii, 481-962 p.: ill.The materials of Modern Russian, like those of its prototype, the Modem Language Association’s Modern Spanish, provide a new kind of language course based on audio-lingual principles and aimed at speaking proficiency within the framework of the traditional language program. Modern Russian consists of two volumes of eighteen lessons each, designed for a two-year course meeting from three to five hours a week. Stressing the fundamental structural features of the contemporary spoken language, the thirty-six lessons present a total vocabulary of some 2700 items. Magnetic tape recordings, available to accompany the written materials, are an integral part of the two-year program. In addition, long-playing disk recordings of basic portions of the lessons are obtainable for home study. Audio-lingual principles assume that fluency in a foreign language is acquired less by intellectual analysis than by intensive practice. Awareness of structure is acquired not by memorizing rules and paradigms but by imitation and repetition of basic language patterns and by performance of drills carefully constructed to capitalize on the learner’s natural inclination to analogize from material already learned. Language learning thus properly begins with listening and repeating and only later proceeds to reading and writing. These first two stages are of primary importance if the student is to gain even a minimum control of spoken Russian; for this reason we recommend strongly that most material be presented and practiced with books closed, both in class and in the laboratory.