This paper discusses an approach to foreign language teaching and learning that is being used to teach Russian to students at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, and English to students at Moscow State University in Russia. The approach relies on an alphabetical list of nearly 4,000 cognates and semi-cognates recognizable in both languages,…

Russian culture is very much influenced by its huge land area, peculiar topography, and harsh climate. To understand Russian culture one must know how Russians perceive nature. This paper discusses how this concept may be conveyed to U.S. middle school students through poetry. Poems about nature can provide students an opportunity to understand…

This resource guide is designed to provide foreign language teachers with suggestions for helping students learn how to become better language learners. The five chapters of the guide for teaching writing skills are as follows: (1) Teaching Learning Strategies (e.g., rationale for teaching, types, useful strategies, guidelines, instructional…

This resource guide is designed to provide foreign language teachers with suggestions for helping students learn how to become better language learners. The four chapters of the guide for teaching listening skills are as follows: (1) Teaching Learning Strategies (e.g., rationale for teaching, types, useful strategies, guidelines, instructional…

This resource guide is designed to provide foreign language teachers with suggestions for helping ineffective students learn how to become better language learners and for already effective students to become superior language learners. The four chapters of the guide for teaching reading skills are as follows: (1) Teaching Learning Strategies…

This resource guide is designed to provide foreign language teachers with suggestions for helping students become better language learners. The four chapters of the guide for teaching speaking skills are as follows: (1) Teaching Learning Strategies (e.g., rationale for teaching, types, useful strategies, guidelines, instructional sequence, and…

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,…