Intro Text: Lipson's A Russian course

[Loren Allen Billings]

Whereas I have not Taught with Lipson's book, I did use the comic strip
_Sverkhchelovek_ "Superman" from the back of it.  It was definitely NOT
culturally accurate; nor did it claim to be.  Still, it was very
entertaining to both student and teacher alike.  (A very fitting break from
the [unrevised] _Russian:  Stage I_ which we were using as the main text.)

As for Lipson success stories:  I understand that Carleton College uses it
and supplements it with current culture material.  A colleague there says
that it was actually advantageous of Lipson not to attempt to be up-to-
date on the latest big- and little-C culture for the book.  Now it won't
go out of date (at least in that regard).  Carleton has the advantage of
having only three courses per trimester and meets a lot of hours per week
as a result, completing the initial language sequence in five terms.  (I
might very well have the details slightly wrong.)

I am also teaching Russian structure (mostly declension and conjugation)
to advanced undergraduates at Rutgers University, where Lipson is the
beginning-Russian text.  I'm satisfied with the students' preparation over-
all.  Much of this preparation, it would seem, is thanks to supplementary
materials from Prof. Bill Derbyshire.  Still, the students are quite
prepared to begin honing their inflectional morphology and tend to know
expressions and vocabulary items when they arise in my courses.

--Loren Billings
billings at princeton.edu