New Book Announcement

[Elena Minakova]

Moderne Russische Idiomatik (Modern Russian Idioms) by Elena Minakova,
University of Munich. Helmut Buske Pub.Co. Hamburg, April 2002. 145 pages,
1 cassette
(90 min.). 3-87548-296-4.

Dear Colleagues

I would like to draw your attention to my new learner's book "Moderne
Russische Idiomatik" (Modern Russian Idioms), due for publication in April
2002 by the Helmut Buske Verlag of Hamburg.

The book is designed as a learner's book for advanced students of Russian
who wish to improve their colloquial speech and make it more idiomatic and
expressive.
The book is conceptualized as combination learner's book and dictionary,
requiring no use of additional dictionaries or reference-books. As
appropriate for advanced level students, it is written completely in
Russian, however initial publication in Germany has occasioned the German
title.

The book contains 125 essential Russian idioms, which have been chosen on
the basis of their frequency of use in oral speech, also in modern Russian
films and in mass media, and which cover a wide range of "everyday" topics.
The book provides approximately 30 hours of classroom material in 8
chapters.

Each chapter includes a dialogue presenting new idioms, followed by
exercises which train students to identify, understand and re-use the
idioms in their oral speech. Most exercises are designed as dialogues that
develop" situative competence", as dialogues, rather than "key-word"
presentation (e.g. all idioms with the word golova, nos etc.), better
facilitate a reality situation.

Each chapter also provides the explication of the idioms. Special attention
has been focused here on complete grammatical information for each idiom,
e.g. its syntactic role in the sentence as well as its morphological
characteristics. For this reason, information about its use is provided in
numerous examples of free combinations with other words, phrase units and
sentences.

In addition, the book contains interesting etymological information about
the origin of most "non-transparent "idioms which are grounded in specific
cultural and historical experience and are therefore more difficult to
understand.

Finally, the book provides general repetition exercises as well as an
answer key.

A cassette accompanies this course, including the dialogues and all the
practice activities in the book, making it suitable for self-study as well
as classroom use. The course is also a valuable aid in teacher training.

The book has 145 pages. It can be ordered from Helmut Buske Verlag,
Richardstrasse 47, D-22081 Hamburg. Tel. 0049/40/29 99 58-0; fax 0049/40/
29 99 58-20; e-mail info at buske.de; website www.Buske.de. The ISBN is
3-87548-296-4.

I would greatly appreciate any help or suggestions for getting the book
reviewed.  Please reply off-list, not on the SEELANGS list.

Sincerely

Elena Minakova
elena.minakova at slav.fak12.uni-muenchen.de

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