Hi,
I asked about this here in the forum some time ago. I also asked about the SLS courses (spoken language courses). There is one for Russian with 24 cassettes and 2 books. They said it was like FSI so I bought it.
I cant be happier with it!!! It is like FSI but a little bit less polised. I will tell you the format of the course here.
The general layout of a unit is:
Conversation, notes on basic sentences, pronunciation practice, drills, more conversations.
First you start with a dialog. Each sentence is built up more or less like FSI for example, (forgive my russian transliteration) if we were going to ask for a cigerette the sentence is:
Ya Hachu Papirosu.
If you havent learnt any of these words before, the book would say:
I - Ya
want (I) - Hachu
Papirosu - a cigerette
The speaker would say in English first, "I" then the russian is given twice. This follows on upto the whole sentence where again it is said twice.
Unit 1 is a bit strange because the course was produced in 1945 I believe and so it says this part is a rapid learning unit for the basics e.g. I want, I go (by car or ride etc), I go on foot, it deals with food and simple directions and numbers (about 15 or so pimsluer units worth).
All vocab is revised and revisted and because the English is given as well as the Russian you get it drummed in to you.
Notes on basic sentences is a section for describing the grammar and forms, for example unit 2 deals with the nomitive case for masc. fem. neuter and plurals and it drills them. The grammar is explained in the book throughout, however some of the audio drills are not printed in the book. The drills are like FSI substitution drills, e.g. on unit two it has drills like:
These are not your matches, they are mine.
This is not you match, it is mine.
This is not your house, it is mine.
The last part of the conversations are completely in Russian, usually there are 3. First a conversation is spoken slowly and then at full speed. The voices on the cassettes are 2 men and 2 women.
The problems so far, the first conversation section is built up as in FSI but the conversation isnt repeated as in the "for fluency" section in FSI but then again the course does have 3 extra conversations at the end which are not interrupted with all grammar and vocab up to that point and each conversation is repeated twice.
Some things are funny. e.g.
My son is in the army,
He has a furlough (which is a holiday from the army).
But then again you learn important things because it will teach later, "my older son is in the army". "Her older son is in the army" etc.
But this is no worse than FSI Spanish (remember anyone, the bomber squandrons are landing etc ;) ).
But everything else is fine, each unit seems to follow a theme e.g. unit 2 is "meeting people", unit 3 "the family", unit 4 "Where are you from" etc.
Unit 3 deals with the genitive (I am doing that unit now).
That is all I have done in the two days. So I cant tell any more at this point but if anyone is interested I will send more details about the course as I work through it.
Regards!
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