Intro Text: Lipson's A Russian course

[Charlotte Wallace]

I never taught Lipson--I was told that one shouldn't if one hadn't take
the course with the man, himself, or one of his apprentices, but I always
heard wonderful things about the classes and enjoyed thumbing through the
book myself.  Could it be that students were most motivated because their
intellect as well as rote language skills was being tested?


Charlotte Wallace
Slavic Department, DP-32
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
206-543-6848

On Fri, 10 Feb 1995, Gerald McCausland wrote:

> 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
>