Course description
For the beginning and intermediate classes, we use "Ultimate Russian Basic-Intermediate" by Living Language (please contact us at our Los Angeles School to discuss further). There is also an optional eight cassette package that accompanies the book. For the advanced classes, we provide handouts at no charge.
"Ultimate Russian Basic-Intermediate" by Living Language
Beginning A (chapters 1-4)
Topics - Getting acquainted, at the airport, at a hotel, and exchanging money.
Grammar and usage - Pronunciation, alphabet, absence of "to be", articles, personal pronouns, simple negation, questions, formal versus informal speech, "umbrella" spelling rule, gender, plurals, "to have", present tense verb conjugation, numbers, nominative case, locative case, prepositional case, etc.
Beginning B (chapters 5-9)
Topics - At work, renting an apartment, talking about home and family, at a concert, renting a car, and getting gas.
Grammar and usage - "To live", "to write", accusative case and direct objects, days of the week, last names, adjectives, "to want", additional present tense verb conjugation, family and relationship words, genitive case, complex sentences, commands and requests, location versus direction, reflexive verbs, etc.
Beginning C (chapters 10-14)
Topics - At the post office, going to a movie, buying a train ticket, symptoms and medicine, and describing oneself.
Grammar and usage - The dative case, additional nominative and accusative cases, possibility and permission, past tense, "to like", telling time, verbs of motion, months and dates, future tense, instrumental case, expressing obligation, irregular nouns and verbs, etc.
Beginning D (chapters 15-19)
Topics - Education and schedules, at a restaurant, the news on television, planning a trip, and domestic services.
Grammar and usage - Cases of plural nouns, adverbs of place, time, and frequency, quantifiers, languages and nationalities, the partitive genitive, impersonal expressions, reported speech, additional instrumental case, verb aspect, etc.
Intermediate A (chapters 20-24)
Topics - Public transportation, dentistry, expressions of gratitude and compliments, domestic activities, and filling out forms.
Grammar and usage - Expressing need, adjectives used as nouns, ordinal numbers, perfective verbs in the future tense, irregular verbs, aspect pairs, past tense of unidirectional verbs, "Let's", collective numbers, expressing "to ask", etc.
Intermediate B (chapters 25-29)
Topics - Shopping in a department store, wedding, popular culture, folk music, shopping for food, and at leisure.
Grammar and usage - Expressing opinions, verbs with constant mutations/stress shift, additional cases, additional aspect, compass points, zodiac, comparative, "love" and "hate", etc.
Intermediate C (chapters 30-34)
Topics - At a museum, cooking, medicine, a job interview, shopping for souvenirs and presents.
Grammar and usage - Superlative, declension and number of surnames, command form, expressing "while", perfective and imperfective imperatives, "again", past and future tense with impersonal expressions, verbs of position, conversational fillers, etc.
Intermediate D (chapters 35-40)
Topics - History, posters, and newspapers, politics, at the hairdresser's, sports, exploring the city, and literature.
Grammar and usage - Slogans, the "unreal" conditional, the indirect imperative, adverbial prepositions, temporal conjunctions, "can", particles, short-form past passive participles, spoken versus written Russian, gerunds, active participles, long-form passive participles, etc.
Advanced Classes
Topics - Discussion of articles, issues, literature, etc.
Grammar and usage - As appropriate related to conversation topics.
If you would like to discuss material covered in these levels, contact us at our Los Angeles School.
Feedback from Students
"Very good - motivates students, effective teaching methods, very concerned about student's learning," Anonymous.
"Great teacher, taught very very effectively and listened to students' needs," Anonymous.
"Excellent course and pace...Anya [the teacher] is very patient and teaches precise pronunciation and reading abilities. This is one of the best language courses I have ever attended. I can read and understand Russian faster than I expected," Bob.
Language Description
Russian language belongs to the East Slavic group of the Slavic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. There are about 167 million Russian speakers in the world, and 153 million of them are in the republics of the former USSR.
