Textbooks

An important and widely-used text on the structure of Russian, of use to teachers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduate language students.

Contents:
I. Structural Transcription
II. Noun Stress
III. Noun Declension;
IV. Adjective Declension
V. Pronominal Adjective Declension
VI. Conjugation
VII. Verbal Adjectives and Verbal Adverbs
VIII. Imperfective Derivation
IX. Irregularities; index
list of exercises

"Levin presents his subject well, writing simply and clearly yet without condescension. ... It should become a standard textbook in the field." (SEEJ)

"Levin is to be congratulated for the orderliness of his presentation, the clarity of his explanations and especially for the exercises and questions for thought and discussion. ... Levin presents theory and enough detail to create a very fine textbook." (MLJ)

A decade of research on Russian case semantics has come together in a valuable new pedagogical tool through the work of Laura Janda and Steven Clancy. The Case Book for Russian, a textbook and exercises, presents the Russian case system in terms of structured semantic wholes. This method of explanation is easily accessible to students and provides a coherent conceptual framework that accounts for the rich and often confusing details of Russian case usage. Throughout the text, the basic meanings of the cases are illustrated with examples from a large database of Russian prose, compiled specifically for this project. Examples in the text and exercises were taken from a variety of sources (primarily books and newspapers of the past decade) and are representative of multiple genres and fields (fiction, current events, contemporary history, politics, law, economics, science and medicine, etc.). By confronting real case samples in an unadulterated form, students can learn to make sense of the systematic meanings of case in a fashion that will approach the understanding of a native speaker. The accompanying exercises continue the presentation of the text and challenge students to implement the concepts they have learned. The interactive version (CD-ROM for Macintosh and Windows platforms) contains recordings of all examples by both male and female native speakers. As students work through the exercises, they can consult the electronic version of the text for quick reference and can print out summary sheets of completed assignments to hand in for class. This book can be used at various levels of study (intermediate through very advanced), and can be used alone or in conjunction with any other materials. The Case Book for Russian can also be used for independent study by anyone interested in maintaining and improving their Russian.

Winner, 2005 AATSEEL Award for Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy (American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages)

More information online

The Case Book for Russian

These short stories by Mikhail Zoshchenko, a classic of Soviet satire, were collected from various early editions. They include such gems as "Rodnye Liudi", "Seren'kii kozlik", "Bania," and other stories. No changes were made in the text. All idiomatic, elliptical, colloquial, or difficult phrases are explained in the footnotes. Standard literary equivalents are provided for all colloquial expressions. A glossary at the end of the book contains all of the words used in the stories. The glossary also contains detailed morphological information, in the same format as the grammatical dictionary 5000 Russian Words (also from Slavica). The stories can be used for second- or third-year students of Russian. Some are suitable even for late in the first year. In addition to being excellent reading assignments, all stories can be summarized easily by the students, or acted out in class. Additional materials for this title are available through the Cornell Language Resource Center at: http://www.lrc.cornell.edu/sales/links/russian "...a timely choice... a welcome classroom tool... (MLJ)

This book of readings is intended for students of Russian who have had at least one semester of study. It has a glossary and notes on facing pages and a complete glossary at the end. The copiously illustrated text of this book is a copy of portions of the 1939 edition. The original book was intended as a children's encyclopedia embedded in a lively and engaging story. It is an excellent source of common nouns and verbs (particularly verbs of motion) that rarely occur in such abundance in an ordinary literary work. The language of the book reflects the style of conversational Russian; the sentences are short, free of participial constructions, and often elliptical.

Additional Materials

Additional materials for this title are available through the Cornell Language Resource Center.

Book Reviews

"...a wonderfully innovative addition to the growing stock of intermediate Russian readers. It provides an engaging context for the introduction of common colloquial style without burdening the reader with superfluous material and lengthy grammatical explanations. ...the editors must be applauded for their development of this work into a valuable and enjoyable instructional tool." (SEEJ)

"...may be considered a useful supplement to encourage beginning students to start reading. The task will be much easier because the vocabulary notes provided are quite helpful and the end glossary complete." (MLJ)

This new version of the Instructor's Manual is now available from Slavica. It contains comments and suggestions on how to use the text, as well as answers to the exercises. (Supplied free to teachers adopting Continuing With Russian.)

A new, substantially reworked, thoroughly reorganized, and greatly expanded version of Charles Townsend's classic textbook for graduate students. Its chapters have been radically resequenced, and many of the sections within them have been redesigned or even moved to other chapters in an effort to make both the discussions of individual areas and the overall order of presentation more logical and coherent. Whole new areas and the overall order of presentation more logical and coherent. Whole new sections have been added, and many of the previous sections expanded to provide more thorough coverage. While the book retains its copious, direct, and useful comparisons to Russian, it has been made more independent of Russian, with many new English translations added. It should be emphasized that, even more than in the first edition, the main value of the book is its thorough treatment of Czech grammatical areas, which will be equally accessible to users with or without a knowledge of Russian. Though CTR covers a great many topics of Czech grammar quite fully, it cannot replace ordinary Czech textbooks. It can be used as a supplement to a regular grammars and, in many cases, the analyses offer a truer, or at least more sophisticated and, certainly, more "linguistic" view of indivdiual topics. CTR serves a particularly well as an introduction to Czech linguistics for those interested in Slavic linguistics who will be taking Czech as a second Slavic language after Russian. However, the lack of dependence on Russian cited above also makes this book of equal benefit to linguistics students with little or no Russian. Knowledge of or interest in Slavic linguistics or even linguistics itself is distincly not a preprequisite for using CTR, and all structural material is fully explained, particularly in chapter 2, where the bulk of the structural (and historically motivated) material is discussed. Extensive and comprehensive exercises accompany each chapter, and because keys to the exercises are also provided, the book is highly suitable for indivdual study of Czech.

"Anyone with an interest in Slavic languages and literatures should find this book a useful addition to his/her library" (Russica Romana)