Examines four approaches to teaching Russian literature in translation and offers suggestions from the most successful programs to help in establishing, developing, or improving similar programs at other educational institutions. (EKN)

Suggests aids to the acquisition of some of the basic features that are sources of difficulty in Russian verbs. The proposals concern form rather than function and are derived from regularity, overall frequency, and actual occurrence in textbooks. (EKN)

Describes benefits of teaching a course on the Soviet press to Russian language students, including the opportunity to integrate practical considerations of reading and conversation skills with theoretical considerations of philosophy and principles of mass communication in the Soviet Union. (Author/BK)

Questions the relevance of the traditional structural/grammatical approach to Russian course design. Suggests instead a functional notional approach and provides an overview of its rationale and principles. (EKN)

Presents the 1986 proficiency guidelines for Russian developed by the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages. The guidelines cover speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills for the levels of novice, intermediate, advanced, and superior. (CB)

Argues that the development of an explicit reading approach focusing on the comprehension of Russian expository prose is long overdue. Recommends and discusses "The Contextual Approach to Russian" by Plank and Daugherty as a textbook which outlines a pragmatic strategy for reading and comprehending Russian expository prose. (SED)

A discussion of articulation in second language education programs looks at issues in the transition of language learners from one educational institution to another, particularly from the secondary level to higher education, and proposes a process-oriented model for addressing these issues. It first defines the terminology of articulation…

Situation comedy (sitcom) dialogs that are included in PLATO lessons for first year Russian students are described. These comprehension exercises make use of both the touch panel and the audio capabilities of PLATO. The sitcom dialogs were written by a native speaker of Russian and are based on the vocabulary in the textbook plus a small number of…

Learning characteristics of students undertaking computer assisted instruction using the PLATO system were assessed for five Russian courses at the University of Illinois. Since the computer allows accurate measurement of the interaction of the student with the material being learned, four measures of student performance were assessed--error rate,…