Verbs in Russian Stage One and Two

[David Powelstock]

Dear SEELANGers,
Although it's been a while since I've rolled up my sleeves and taught
Russian verb conjugation, and I am not familiar with the particular
textbooks under discussion, I thought I'd send a probe into the ether.  When
I learned Russian, it was according to the single-stem (right terminology?)
system suggested by Jakobson and developed by Charlie Townsend.  Perhaps as
a math-geek type from high-school years, I found this structural (rather
than paradigmatic) approach appealing.  (I've always been a sucker for
structuralist morphology.)  I'd be curious to know what the experienced
language pedagogues think about this approach.  Is it too "linguistic" for
beginning language students?  Does it appeal only to some, rather than all,
students?  When I was teaching Russian, I always found that students
responded very differently to different approaches.  In part out of an
awareness of this variety of learning styles-and since my own preference for
axiomatic systems was decidedly in the minority-I usually ended up
presenting the material in at least two ways simultaneously: paradigms, plus
morphological system, plus usage examples.  Almost every student could
respond to one of the alternatives.  My arcane structuralist handouts on
(e.g.) the formation of participles were received by some with enthusiasm,
and by others with puzzlement, but I always tried to provide more than one
pathway to "the correct form."  The students who thought my handouts were
crazy were free just to ignore them.  All that mattered was the
grammatically correct utterance, and different students got to it in
different ways.

I hope that the serious, credentialed language teachers out there won't jump
on me for putting forward my humble and uninformed comment (I am curious,
not critical), but what do you all thing about these matters?  Is it
conceivable that a multi-style approach could be incorporated into a single
textbook?  Perhaps it has been done already without my knowing?  Is it a
terrible idea?  Need communicative and structural-linguistic approaches to
language acquisition be considered mutually exclusive?

Well, that's my little meditation/provocation.  I'd be very curious to hear
what others think.

Best,
david