Intro Text: Lipson's A Russian course

[Gerald McCausland]

On Fri, 10 Feb 1995, Justin Langseth wrote:

> I was wondering if there are any other fans of Alexander Lipson's
> "A Russian Course" out there in SEELANGS land.

I remember how horrified I was some years back when told as a teaching
assistant that I was expected to teach Elementary Russian with Lipson's
text.  Committed as I was to proficiency-oriented language teaching, I
could not imagine how I would manage.  Lipson has no authentic materials,
no contextualized exercises, no communicative activities, no real-life
listening activities, the lessons are completely grammar-driven and the
"cultural content" is, despite the humor, more than a little offensive....
But I decided to submit and make the best of it.  And, despite the fact
that the book did nothing right and everything wrong....  IT WORKED!

To this day I still cannot account for it, but the students from my
"Lipson groups" finished the year speaking with greater accuracy and
fluency than students I have taught or worked with since then studying
with Ovsienko's _Russian for Beginners_ or the revised _Russian: Stage
One_.  While I'm sure the recent discussion of _Golosa_ is of more
relevance to us now, I've often wondered whether others had similar
experiences with Lipson.  Certainly a unique text, the likes of which we
will not see again.

Jerry.

------------------------
Jerry McCausland
University of Pittsburgh
gmmst11+ at pitt.edu