Russian Textbook for High School

[Jane Shuffelton]

Dear Mary,

I am a past president of American Council of Teachers of Russian and am
delighted to hear the good news of a new high school Russian program.  I
taught Russian in Brighton High School, Rochester, NY for over 30 years and
loved almost every minute of it.

In reply to your textbook question, I would most positively endorse the
Face to Face series.  It is the only Russian textbook ever to be produced
with high school students in mind. It is not perfect, but I think all of us
would agree that no textbook is.It has a series of videos and workbooks,
and it has the advantage of being a complete four year series. The Fayer
book is to my mind not ideal, partly because of the lack of pictures, but
also because it is out of date and sparse on contemporary cultural
references.

Please let me encourage you to join American Council of Teachers of Russian
(ACTR).  We can offer you so many fine programs, including participation in
two national contests. One is the Olympiada of Spoken Russian, held in the
spring. The other is the National Russian Essay Contest, held in November.
Don't let the term "essay" scare you - beginning levels usually write
paragraphs on a topic like Замечательный человек, Зачем Путешествовать, Что
мне особенно нравится, etc.This is not a contest that gives out
first,second, third prizes. Rather, we try to encourage all students by
rating the essays Gold, Silver, Bronze, or Honorable Mention., provided
they adhere to contest specifications.  We publish a newsletter which
includes classroom ideas and articles. We have a Russian Scholar Laureate
award which lets schools nominate one outstanding student per year.
ACTR also runs a prototype AP Russian exam and program for upper level high
school students. Teacher training seminars for this program are held in the
fall. All the programs mentioned are, of course, announced in the
newsletter. You can find information about joining ACTR at the home page
for American Councils for International Education.

I would love to know more about your school and your program.  I tried to
send this off list to the email address mharrah at susd.org, but gmail
rejected it.  Is that an accurate contact address for you?

Congratulations on a new program!
Jane Shuffelton
janeshuffelton at gmail.com
On Sat, Mar 17, 2012 at 9:00 atiAM, Ivliyeva, Irina <ivliyeva at mst.edu>wrote:

> Good morning, dear colleagues,
> I endorse all three books listed below.
>
> I personally have  been  using  Basic Russian (by Mischa A. Fayer) for the
> past 15 years. This well composed text has sevearl advantages:
> 1) NO PICTURES! thus no distractions from the grammar/ syntax content.
> Misha keeps it simple - in a good way.
> 2) All units are well balanced and take no more than 8 pages per unit.
> 3) The book is not too heavy or big or expensive (easy to carry around,
> per my students' admission).
> 4) The minimal cultural content (which is always changing in the real
> world!) allows to use the  Fayer textbook as a stable base,  and gives an
> open playing field to  instructors to incorporate  any cultural /
> contemporary content  of their choosing (I use YouTube, Internet, Lenta.ru,
> etc.).
> 5) My students are engineers. If you choose this book for a different
> audience,  there is always a chance that they may not take it as well as my
> students do.
>
> Good luck!
>
> Irina Ivliyeva
> Assistant Professor of Russian
> Missouri S&T
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on
> behalf of Mary Harrah
> Sent: Fri 3/16/2012 11:20 PM
> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
> Subject: [SEELANGS] Russian Textbook for High School
>
>
>
> I am starting a Russian language program at the high school level in our
> school district.  It will be the only program at that level in our state.
>  I am looking at three different textbooks, but would really like some
> advice as to what works well at the high school level.  Currently I am
> looking at:
>
> 1.  Basic Russian (by Mischa A. Fayer)
> 2.  Golosa
> 3.  Russian Face to Face
>
> I would love to hear about your experience with any of these.
>
> Thank you!
>
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