Russian Short Courses Levels

Course description: Russian Level 1 is for the people who have no or very little knowledge of the language (few very basic niceties/words, introduction to the alphabet) with no knowledge of grammar.

The course aims at giving students understanding of the simple main grammar areas, developing basic vocabulary and enabling students to use Russian in simple and familiar everyday situations and providing them with the solid basis for further language learning.

Topics: Going places, surviving in the main travel situations: airports, hotels, restaurants, theatres and cinemas, streets and directions, time and opening times, money, talking about oneself, home and family.

Skills: Understanding of sentences and frequently-used expressions in simple and familiar everyday situations. Communicating in simple routine and familiar situations. Delivering and retrieving simple information on personal details, background, time, directions, costs, phone numbers etc. Expressing likes and dislikes. Keeping up very simple short conversations. Understanding simple public announcements, notices and signs. Understanding simple written messages. Writing down simple information and understanding simple written messages.

Grammar: Gender and cases, plurals, nouns, adjectives (including basic use of short forms), simple prepositions and conjunctions, numerals, personal pronouns and possessive pronouns, simple adverbs, verbs' conjugation, infinitives and imperatives, past, present and introduction to the future tense use.

Study Materials:

Ruslan Russian 1 (Textbook, Workbook) by John Langran and Natalia Veshneva 
 

Ruslan Russian Grammar by J.Langran and N.Veshneva 

www.ruslan.co.uk 

Course description: Level 2 Russian is for the people who have recently completed the beginners course or who already have the basic knowledge of the language and it's grammar acquired through visits to the country or self-study. The course aims at giving students further understanding of grammar, developing broader vocabulary and four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Topics: Talking about family and friends, basic banking, using Russian postal services, changing money, talking about the weather, making arrangements to meet and go out, making appointments, using medical and pharmaceutical services, body parts, describing people, shopping and prices, clothes, shoes and colours, sizes and trying on, travelling by different modes of transport, work and leisure.

Skills: Understanding the main points of clear standard speech on familiar and regularly encountered matters, as well as the main points of some TV/video/audio mass media programmes and sources on familiar topics when delivery is slow and clear. Understanding simple texts containing mainly everyday language, descriptions of events, wishes and feeling in personal letters/messages. Dealing with most travel and everyday life situations, entering and keeping up conversations on familiar topics. Expressing opinions and giving reasons. Narrating a simple short story. Writing simple texts on familiar topics and personal letters/messages.

Grammar: Pronouns, nouns, numbers, ordinal numbers and adjective cases use, prepositions and the cases they take, comparative of adjectives and adverbs, superlative, conjunctions, reflective verbs, verb aspect and forms of the past, present and future tense, verbs of motion (prefixed and non-prefixed), the personal pronouns сам and себя, the possessive pronoun свой, negatives and other types of pronouns.

Study Materials

Ruslan Russian 2 (Textbook, Workbook) by John Langran and Natalia Veshneva
Ruslan Russian Grammar by J.Langran and N.Veshneva 

www.ruslan.co.uk

Course description: Level 3 Russian is for the people who have recently completed Lower Intermediate course or who already have acquired the basic knowledge of the Russian grammar (i.e. gender, declension of singular and plural nouns, conjugation of verbs, imperfective verbs, the three tenses, the use of adjectives and adverbs) through visits to the country or self-study. The course aims at giving students further understanding of grammar, developing broader vocabulary and four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Topics: family and personal information, daily routines, health and sports, shopping, travelling by different modes of transport, food and eating out, work and leisure.

Skills: Understanding the main points of clear standard speech on familiar and regularly encountered matters, as well as the main points of some audio mass media programmes and sources on familiar topics when delivery is slow and clear. Understanding texts containing mainly everyday language, descriptions of events, wishes and feeling in personal letters, messages, and stories. Dealing with most travel and everyday life situations, entering, and keeping up conversations on familiar topics. Expressing opinions and giving reasons. Narrating a simple short story. Writing simple texts on familiar topics and personal letters/messages.

Grammar: Reflexive verbs, verb aspect, verbs of motion, transitive and non-transitive verbs,  Imperative forms of verbs, permission and prohibition, declension of nouns and adjectives, prepositions with various cases. 

Study Materials
Let's Go! Poekhali!: Textbook 2.1, By S.I. Chernyshov
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lets-Go-Poekhali-Textbook-2-1/dp/5907123753

You don’t need to buy the CD.

Course description: 

Lower Advanced is for people who have completed Upper Intermediate Level Course and are familiar with main grammar structures: declension of nouns and adjectives (both singular and plural) in all cases, imperfective and perfective aspects of verbs, reflexive verbs, verbs of motion including prefixes, Present, Past and Future Tenses. Please note that this course does not require impeccable or extensive knowledge of these structures but students should be familiar with all of them.

The course runs over three ten-week terms and each lesson is two hours long.  It is designed to provide a smooth transition from Upper Intermediate to Advance level. Along with conversational language the course provides a   gentle introduction to the language of media students will encounter to a wider extent at Advanced level.

The course dedicates a lot of time to regular revision of previously learnt grammar / vocabulary and offers a gradual introduction to new grammatical structures and topic-related vocabulary. All four skills (speaking, reading, listening and writing) are incorporated in each lesson.

On this course students will learn to express their opinion, agreement or disagreement, ask questions about the topic of discussion, as well as to summarise key points and paraphrase. This course will help them understand the use of different grammatical structures, registers and vocabulary in texts and audio adapted from authentic resources and advanced level textbooks to the required level. A variety of communicative and writing activities will enable students to expand their vocabulary on a selection of topics and use newly acquired words and phrases in a discussion.

Most of the topics are re-visited at a more advanced level on the next course.

Course textbook and supplementary resources

• Let's Go! Poekhali!: Textbook 2.2 by S.I. Chernyshov, 2012

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lets-Go-Poekhali-Textbook-2-2/dp/5907123508

• Teacher’s materials (texts and audio adapted from advanced level textbooks and  authentic online resources to the required level)

Topics (may be introduced on the course in a slightly different order)

• Lifestyle
• Interests and values in modern society
• Culture:  language, cinema, theatre
• Tourism and travel
• Sport
• Personality
• History and biography
• Family and education
• Economy and social problems

Grammar (may be introduced on the course in a slightly different order)

• Revision of noun and adjective declension
• Reflexive verbs
• Dates (cardinal and ordinal numbers)
• Imperfective and perfective verbs
• Prefixed verbs of motion
• Indefinite pronouns (someone, something, anything, anyone)
• Comparative and superlative forms of adjectives
• Long and short forms of adjectives
• Condition (real and unreal)
• Possibility and wishes
• Cases after various prepositions
• Double negatives
• Active and passive participles, gerund (brief introduction to literary style)

Course description: Advanced Russian is for people who have completed an Upper Intermediate Level Course and have a strong command of Russian and its main grammatical structures. The course runs over three ten-week terms and each session is two hours long. The course includes speaking, listening, reading and writing and will cover the following:

Topics: Russian family and marriage, the status of women in Russia, homeless children, orphanages and adoptions, Russian middle class and nouveaux riches, young Russians and their interests and values, education in Russia, sports and tourism, the media, Russian culture and literature.

Functions: presenting viewpoints, developing arguments, analysing and evaluating in speech and in writing; listening/reading and responding to spoken/written Russian texts, covering different contexts, registers, styles and genres; understanding and applying the grammatical system and a range of structures in Russian; transferring meaning from English into Russian and vice versa.

Grammar: revision of cases and aspects of verbs; participles; verbs of motion; numerals (declension, collective numerals, fractions and decimals); relative pronouns; comparatives and superlatives; prepositions; particles; adverbs and gerunds; conditional sentences; conjunctions; passive constructions; prefixes and suffixes.

Study materials:

Rossiia: den’ segodniashnii (Present-Day Russia), Rodimkina, A., & Landsman, N., 2005, Zlatoust (ISBN 5-86547-352-2); teacher’s materials.

Course description: Advanced Russian Plus is for people who have completed an Advanced Level Course and have a strong command of Russian and its grammatical structures. The course runs over three ten-week terms and each session is two hours long. The course includes speaking, reading, writing and listening and will cover the following:

Topics: image of Russia abroad, unemployment, migrant workers, human rights, freedom of speech, mass media, elections, education, terrorism.

Functions: presenting viewpoints, developing arguments, analysing and evaluating in speech and in writing; reading / listening and responding to spoken / written Russian texts, covering different contexts, registers styles and genres; understanding and applying the grammatical system and a range of structures in Russian.

Grammar: revision and reinforcement of cases and aspects of verbs, especially verbs of motion with prefixes and perfective / imperfective verbs; declension of numerals; participles; particles; conjunctions; adverbs and gerunds; passive constructions; imperatives.

Study materials: teacher’s own resources, materials from the Internet (online newspapers, magazines).