Textbooks

This book, the first modern, full course of Slovak for English speakers, is intended for the first year of language study at the college level. It is also suitable for self study when used in combination with accompanying tapes. For additional materials related to this title, visit the author's website at: https://lektorek.org Each lesson, designed to be covered in approximately two weeks of study, consists of dialogues, grammatical commentary, vocabulary, exercises, sentences for translation, and a reading. Lessons are focused on specific practical-use areas: greetings, family and home life, work, study, shopping, meals, and so on. Although conversations and readings are set in contemporary Slovakia, situations are chosen for their generality, their ability to apply to life in both Slovakia and the United States. Grammar is presented matter-of-factly and explicitly, on a level adequate for understanding and making creative use of the conversations and readings. The order of presentation follows the order in which the grammatical topics arise naturally out of the textual material. The material is reinforced by ample and varied pattern-drill exercises, translations, and situational scripts for acting out. The language in this book is modeled on the colloquial speech of younger educated speakers residing in present-day Slovakia. The student who masters the material in this book will be able to read, understand, and communicate with people in Slovakia, as well as participate successfully in summer-study programs at Slovak universities. The book is richly illustrated with photographs, a map, ink drawings, and folk songs with music, as well as numerous jokes, humorous drawings, and other clippings from newspapers and magazines. In the vocabulary grammatical information is given for the words, as well as the number of the lesson where the word is first used. A seven-page index concludes the book.

"The appearance of a new textbook by Oscar Swan is an occasion for joyful anticipation. One expects genuine, lively colloquial examples of the language under study, understated droll wit in the personality of the central dialogue persona (a literary mutation, one believes, of Oscar himself); an up-to-date presentation of social realia as well as grammatical explanations; rigorous, thorough exercises, including morphological drills, topic-oriented dialogues, target-language translations. And all of that is what we find in this delightful and capacious volume, which takes its place as by far the best introductory Slovak text for English speakers, ever." (SEEJ)

The purpose of this book is to allow students of Russian in their first and second years of study to read -- and to enjoy! -- authentic, unabridged, and unsimplified Russian literature. Works chosen for the collection give their reader insight into Russian life from the early 1930s to the end of the 1980s and their difficulty is appropriate for beginning and intermediate students. The protagonists of these texts, as well as the audience for which they were written, seem to grow up and come of age as we move through the decades from one author to the next. Among the authors included are Kharms, Inber, Marshak, Bitov, Zhvanetsky, and Narbikova. The texts include a number of charming poems, as well as prose, and the entire book is liberally illustrated. Word lists provided for every page of the text allow students to concentrate on the syntax and the meaning of the material rather than waste their time and energy digging for words in the back of the book. Each page of word lists offers vocabulary in the order in which it appears. Moving a ruler or a sheet of paper down the list, one can easily find translations for the words which are not usually part of a beginner's or intermediate student's active vocabulary. Frequently used words and their derivatives are listed several times throughout the book in order to enhance memorization and to allow teachers and students to read the texts in any order they choose. On all glossary pages, high-frequency words are marked with an asterisk.

One very important thing about all the texts presented in this collection is the exhilaration of language, the fun and joy of naturally flowing style, the musicality of their rhythm and sound. These texts are wonderful examples that will teach students to play with the language, to play with words as poets always do, as children always do in their native tongue. This collection presents authentic literary works that combine excellent style, humanistic content, and engaging presentation with the degree of difficulty acceptable for beginning and intermediate students of Russian. The book follows the topics, vocabulary, and grammar taught in elementary and intermediate courses of Russian. The grammar of the unabridged texts emphasizes verbs, especially conjugation, aspect, and prefixation. In terms of vocabulary and syntax, it offers good preparation for The Twelve Chairs (Intermediate Russian), based upon the novel by Ilf and Petrov, and for Baranskaya's Just Another Week, both also published by Slavica.

Although designed primarily for use with Oscar Swan's First Year Polish (also from Slavica), the material in this workbook can also be used with other Polish textbooks. Part I, Alphabet and Phonetics, has a systematic presentation of the Polish alphabet, notes on phonetics, and an extensive set of drills involving oppositions. Part II, Intonation, shows the three major types of Polish intonation contours and gives 28 pages of sentences with contours marked. Part III is a listing of tapes for the Swan book which are available from the author's website http://lektorek.org Part IV, which comprises the largest part of the book (pages 1-212), is supplementary readings, dialogues, grammatical drills, and other materials (such as proverbs and songs). These are coordinated with the Swan book but can be used with other books as well. The book has many illustrations. A 28-page Glossary at the back contains all words which are not in Swan, along with an indication of where they first occur.

"... this book has filled a pressing need." (MLJ)

A uniquely conceived four-semester language training sequence designed especially for undergraduates not majoring in Russian. Because reading is the single most practical and permanently useful of all language skills, the primary focus of this course is on the development of reading competency and fluency in any discipline or field of interest. The emphasis on interiorization of the language structure and on the acquisition of a basic vocabulary characteristic of expository prose also prepares the student for further study to develop oral skills with a minimal expenditure of time and effort. The Introductory Course stresses good Russian pronunciation and presents the grammar and vocabulary typical of expository prose. The vocabulary to be mastered consists of about 1,000 high frequency words common to most fields of human knowledge, as well as high frequency words occuring in both the written and spoken language. The Advanced Course consolidates previously-learned materials while also expanding the student's knowledge in breadth and depth. A special section appended to this volume contains a large number of supplementary reading selections of interest to a broad segment of college level students. "...Pearce is to be commended for a major contribution to the area of Russian language teaching." (MLJ)

Designed for students who have had at least one year of Russian, this textbook is appropriate for the 3rd, 4th, or 5th semester and can be covered in one or two semesters. It is the middle course of the series of Russian textbooks produced by the Upstate New York writing team from Cornell and Colgate universities (Beginning Russian and Advanced Russian are the others), but it can be used in any other sequence of texts. The main part of this book consists of 18 lessons, all with the same tripartite structure: texts, dialogs, and exercises. The texts are a coherent, smooth-flowing abridgement of the classic novel by Il'f and Petrov. The dialogs are designed to develop fluency in the spoken style of literary Russian. The exercises are divided into four groups: text exercises, dialog exercises, grammar exercises, and a translation. The texts and the dialogs are accompanied by extensive comments on Russian grammar, style, and culture. The text exercises are designed to develop the art of paraphrasing and the dialog exercises offer practice in using familiar cliches and conversational gambits. The grammar exercises are based primarily on the section of the book that follows the 18 lessons, the Overview of Russian Conjugation by Alexander Nakhimovsky. This section contains a detailed analysis of the verb system: the prefixes, suffixes, and the types of roots that play a role in Russian word formation. Although there is considerable overlap between the three main parts of each lesson in terms of grammar and vocabulary, it is possible to use them independently and to skip one or another of them. Information on the inflection of Russian words is given in a 12-page section on Russian Endings at the end of the book. This concise review of the rules for adding endings onto stems also contains extensive illustrative paradigms of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. The rules given in this section are essentially the rules of Beginning Russian, but some of them are more detailed. This section also serves as a guide for using the exhaustive Russian-English glossary, which contains all of the content words of the book along with their morphological characteristics (stress patterns, irregular forms, aspect partners, etc.). This inflectional information is based on A.A. Zaliznjak's grammatichskii slovar' russkogo iazyka. There is also a complete English-Russian word index. Each lesson has additional readings in the form of a dialog between two students; this provides vocabulary for discussing courses, teachers, textbooks, impressions and thoughts about fictional characters, etc. Short displays of Russian roots are interspersed among the lessons. The book is beautifully illustrated with reproductions of the original Kukryniksy drawings. For technical and legal reasons, Slavica Publishers no longer carries the The Twelve Chairs DVD-ROM However, more than a dozen films based on the novel 12 Chairs have been produced worldwide. Some of them are easily available on DVD or online today: The Twelve Chairs, 1970, directed by Mel Brooks, in English 12 стульев, 1976, четырех-серийный телевизионный художественный фильм, режиссер Марк Захаров, на русском языке. At the time of this writing, the film can be watched without restrictions at http://youtu.be/RhlPZuPmOS8. Двенадцать стульев, 1971, режиссер Леонид Гайдай, двух-серийный художественный фильм на русском языке. At the time of this writing, the film is offered by Mosfilm for free unrestricted viewing at http://cinema.mosfilm.ru/films/film/Dvenadtcat-stulev/dvenadtsat-stulev-1/. Contact the author of the book, Slava Paperno for more information: slava.paperno@cornell.edu.

The book is divided into 14 chapters (Transport, Knizhnyj magazin, Pervyj vizit v gosti, etc.). Each chapter contains 15 to 20 dialogs, typically 4 lines long. The dialogs are written in a very colloquial style. The book contains no grammar explanations, and no glossary. Side-by-side translations make clear what each line means, and a number of footnotes explain cultural differences. The dialogs have worked well with students in their fourth or fifth semester, and fit conveniently into a course that has a conversation class once a week. They can also be useful to graduate students, exchange scholars, and anyone residing in the Soviet Union for a period of work or study. They're easily memorized, and should be, to be acted out with another person. Once performed, the situation can be developed -- ask directions, take a taxi, and so on. The 39 photographs, taken expressly to go with these dialogs, provide a context and a starting point for new situations. Additional materials for this title are available through the Cornell Language Resource Center at: http://www.lrc.cornell.edu/sales/links/russian