Department of Slavonic

Paper RU B1

Use of Russian

Course Adviser in 2011-2012: Mrs Natasha Franklin

Course Lecturers in 2011-2012: Dr Elena Filimonova, Ms Vera Tsareva-Brauner

Teaching

The Use of Russian class is taught weekly with seven required pieces of work per term in Michaelmas and Lent, three in Easter.
The class is intended to develop your ability to comprehend, analyze, and produce a coherent response to many styles of Russian writing and a wide range of topics. A particular focus of this class is the analysis of idiom and sensitivity to style and register, but such analysis requires an extensive vocabulary and a solid command of the basic rules of Russian grammar and syntactic structures. Reading and writing assignments are intended to build vocabulary and improve the grammatical accuracy of your spoken and written Russian. You will practice synthesizing, summarizing, and reacting to short texts throughout the year, but you will also work on developing your own writing skills through focused grammar exercises and structured writing assignments.

Preparation over the Summer

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/

Examination.

In Tripos 2011 the examination will consist of the following sections:

In Section A candidates are given a short text in Russian, they will be asked to write a critical response, i.e. to express an opinion and make an argument that has a clearly expressed relationship to the content of the passage.
Section B remains the same, requiring candidates to translate English sentences, each containing at least one specific grammatical point, into Russian.
In Section C candidates are given a short text in Russian followed by questions that test comprehension and linguistic skills. Sentences for paraphrase in C.ii may contain either colloquial expressions that test students' ability to derive meaning from context as in the past, OR they may ask students to paraphrase expressions that are grammatically or lexically challenging.

Candidates are required to answer all questions in Russian. Candidates will not be required to translate a passage or passages of continuous prose into Russian.
You may download past examination papers here, but bear in mind that papers before 2011have a different format for Section A. Section C will contain slightly more varied questions for comprehension and paraphrase.
For a full list of language classes taken by post A-level students at Part IA, and ab initio students at Part IB, see this page.