Department of Slavonic Studies

Part IB Option A

Beginners' course in the second year

The ex-ab initio course is an intensive course: it develops students' language skills in the use of Russian, translation and oral practice through a series of three weekly classes and a weekly lecture on grammar and syntax. The language papers you have to take, and the teaching arrangements, are identical to those for post A-level students in their first year.

During this year, you also have the chance to take options from the Slavonic Department's full range of scheduled papers at 1B: you can choose to study subjects as diverse as Kievan and Muscovite Rus, Russian and Soviet history, 19th and 20th literature and culture, Ukrainian, and Slavonic linguistics.

All students in Part 1B, Option A must take the Diagnostic Test that will be offered on Tuesday before the Michaelmas teaching term begins, at 12 noon. You must also attend the briefing meeting for Ru B1 at 2:45 pm on the Wednesday before the start of Michaelmas term. Location of these meetings may be obtained from Directors of Studies or the Departmental Secretary.

Before you start: Essential Summer Preparation

Your summer preparation must address both aspects of the Part IB, Option A course: the study of language and the study of literature, culture and history.

Essential Language preparation

Students in both Part 1A, Option B and Part1B, Option A are strongly advised to work on their Russian language skills consistently over the summer. Vocabulary-building and grammar review are essential to success in this and your other Russian papers. Please try to listen to Russian radio or watch Russian videos online over the summer, ideally for at least 20 minutes daily; read Russian newspapers, magazines, or fiction; get started reading the set texts for Ru 1; and review grammar. Some suggestions: purchase Terence Wade's Grammar and Workbook and start working through the exercises; review the root lists in Browning's Leveraging Your Russian or (if you can't obtain Browning easily) George Patrick's Roots of the Russian Language ; work through the verb exercises in A. Andrews, G. Averyanova, G. Pyadusova, The Russian Verb: Form and Function; work through exercises on cases from Marianna Bogojavlensky; work  again through exercises  from Colloquial Russia (making sure to include Translations, available on Camtools) and Zdravstvuyte!. Download old exams for Ru A1 and work through them

Books
Required textbook for Ru B1:

• Gary Browning et al., Leveraging Your Russian With Roots, Prefixes, and Suffixes (Slavica Publishers, 2001).

You may order this book directly from the publisher, www.slavica.com, and they will give you a 20% discount. Copies of both are also available from Heffers Bookshop in Cambridge as of 12 August 2010.
Essential Reference Works:

• Terence Wade, A Comprehensive Russian Grammar (Blackwell)
• S. I. Ozhegov, "Russian-Russian" dictionary, Slovar' russkogo iazyka

Additional Useful Textbooks and Reference Works (the first two books are highly recommended, and they can be used for independent study):

• Marianna Bogojavlensky, Russian Review Grammar (Slavica Publishers, 1981). This book can be ordered directly from publisher or purchased from Heffers in Cambridge (see G.Browning, Leveraging your Russian, above)
• Э. Эндрюс, Г. Аверьянова, Г Пядусова Русский глагол: Формы и их функции/ A. Andrews, G. Averyanova, G. Pyadusova, The Russian Verb: Form and Function (Москва: Русский язык. Курсы 2008 г.) This book contains everything you will ever need to know about Russian verbal forms. The explanations are in English, and there are many exercises, most of them with keys. It can be purchased online from Ruslania, http://www.ruslania.com/entity-1/context-577/author-5580.html
• Patricia Anne Davis et al., Making Progress in Russian: A Second Year Course. (John Wiley and Sons, 1997). This title is particularly recommended as a summer review text for students who lack confidence in their command of foundational grammar and vocabulary.
• Derek Offord, Modern Russian (Bristol Classical Press)
• George Z. Patrick, Roots of the Russian Language (McGraw-Hill, 1989). [An acceptable, although not an ideal alternative to the Browning text listed in "Essential References" above.]
• Terence Wade, A Russian Grammar Workbook (Blackwell)
• The Oxford Russian Dictionary (Russian-English, English-Russian) (revised edition, OUP) (now available in one volume)
• A.I. Smirnitskii, Russian-English online dictionary http://www.rambler.ru/dict/ruen/

Essential Preparatory Reading

It is essential that you make your selection of scheduled paper well in advance, so that you can spend the summer preparing the necessary reading. The following is a list of the scheduled papers available to you; reading lists will clearly signal the key primary sources that you should read over the summer. Please make sure that you contact the course convenor of the relevant paper for further advice.

• Paper RU3: The history and culture of Early Rus
• Paper RU4: Early Modern Russia: literature, history, and visual culture from 1300 to 1725
• Paper RU5: Russian Culture from the Golden Age to the Silver Age
• Paper RU6: Russian culture after 1880
• Paper RU7: Russia in Revolution 1861-1917
• Paper RU8: Socialist Russia 1917-1991
• Paper RU9: The history of the Russian language
• Paper UK1: Introduction to the Language, Literature and Culture of Ukraine

Language Work

Language classes and teaching arrangements are identical to those for post A-level students in their first year (Part IA, Option B).

Examination Papers

Students must take at the end of their second year five examination papers in total, including at least three examination papers in Slavonic. Two of these are language papers, the third one is a scheduled paper:

• RU B1: Use of Russian
• RU B2: Translation from Russian and Oral B
• 1 scheduled paper from the list here (Scheduled Papers).

The remaining two papers you have to choose from MML Part IB Schedule. One of these may, if you wish, be a further Russian or Slavonic scheduled paper.

Non-Standard Russian Classes

In addition to the compulsory classes, students have the option of attending an extra class run by Mrs N. Franklin.c

The language that real Russians actually speak is much richer, more varied, and more subtly charged with emotional nuances than the "neutral", "correct" language that we start by learning. This course of lectures will introduce some of the common but technically non-standard ways in which Russian achieves its expressiveness and flexibility.

Among the themes covered will be: diminutives and ways of indicating degrees of affection; the unique expressive and aesthetic diversity of Russian obscenities; interjections and exclamations; street slang.

The lectures take place once a fortnight on Monday at 1 pm, through the Michaelmas and Lent Terms. Please contact Mrs N. Franklin (nvf1000@cam.ac.uk) to register your interest.