Russian rap and how to get students to study Russian

[Pavel Samsonov]

> Oh, you're so right! Cheesy pop music works great too, and it's great for
> lower levels, because the vocab terms aren't too complex. I think it would
> be fun to make a tape of Russian music etc. (poetry could even be
included)
> a compulsory part of a course, like a textbook. By the end of the class
the
> goal would be to have made it through the whole tape (hopefully memorizing
> the whole thing as well).
>
> Another good thing about music is students don't get as bored with it when
> it is listened to repeatedly. I have to say, I read Stantsionnyj
Smotritel'
> so many times through my degree, in at least three variants, that I can
> barely stand the story now! (Sorry, Pushkin). Another thing we read a lot
> was Chekhov's "comedies" - which weren't nearly as funny when it took you
> ten times as long to get through the story than he intended.
>
> Kat

In my practice I took advantage of my students' interest to action movies
and other unsophisticated fun stuff. No, I did not shoot movies. But I wrote
a catching story full of suspence. I lead the main character through lots of
adventures as well as the whole Russian grammar, words of motion and idioms.
The story was broken down into small pieces, each ending in suspence. I tape
recorded the story with my Russian speaking friends, mixing it with music
and some sound effects (wind, gunshots, police sirens, etc.). The students
received  a tape for every single home assignments and were supposed to
either transcribe the piece or answer the questions to the piece (to control
listening comprehension). In class more exercises followed. The beauty of
this was that the idioms and grammar were studied in the context of the
whole story, and listening comprehension skills developed rapidly. Besides,
students were always anxious to know what would follow.
(In some cases I invited them to continue).

Now I am working on putting the story online. The same thing, but I don't
have to take care of cassettes, and the exercices can be done online with
the help option, with hyperlinks to some Russian sites and lots and lots of
more fun stuff!!!!!!!!!!!

If you are interested, I can give you more details. This is fun and it
works!

With compliments,

Pavel (Paul) Samsonov
EDAD, College of Education,
Texas A&M University
tel. (409) 862-7771 (lab)
      (409) 862-9152 (home)
fax (409) 862-4347
e-mail p0s5658 at acs.tamu.edu

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