Russian 2203: Course Description

Textbook:
Intermediate Russian: 12 Chairs by Slava Paperno, Alexander Nakhimovsky, Alice Nakhimovsky, and Richard L. Leed, Slavica Publishers. (Bookstores under Russian 2203.)

The subtitle of the textbook refers to a tremendously popular book written in the early Soviet years and best defined as a picaresque novel. The readings and the accompanying film present an abbreviated version of this classic tale, full of satire and adventure.

Audio recordings:
RIT-1, RIT-2 (texts in each Lesson in the book); these recordings are linked to the Syllabus so you can listen online.

Multimedia

Web sites for writing and speaking

Dictionary:
Any good Russian-English and English-Russian dictionary, online or printed, e.g. by Kenneth Katzner, published by John Wiley and Sons (Bookstores under Russian 2203). Also, The Russian Dictionary Tree on our Web site under On-line course materials.

Tests:
A final examination.

Grading and attendance:
About three quarters of your grade will be based on your performance in class and quality of your homework. One quarter of your grade depends on the final exam. Missing more than four classes without a good reason will affect your grade. If you do have to miss a class, send an email to your teacher, preferably in advance. When you return, be sure to ask your teachers for help catching up. We'll always be happy to help.

Course structure:
The textbook has eighteen Lessons. Nine Lessons are covered in Russian 2203 and nine in Russian 2204, in the spring. Each Lesson is typically covered in one week, or four classes:

The course includes a few review weeks.

See Rooms and times for meeting times and places. See Syllabus for specific assignments for each class. The rest of this Course Description tells you how to do your homework and what to expect in class.

Assignment for the Text class:

  1. Read the Text once without consulting the dictionary at the end of the book, i.e. consult only the Text Comments and the little Text Glossary printed immediately after the Text. At this first reading, you will only scan the Text and try to understand its general contents. As you read, the stress marks on the key words in the Text indicate that these words are included in the little Text Glossary.
  2. Listen to the recording of the Text online. Note and mark stress on all unfamiliar words in the Text. In class you will be asked to read aloud parts of the Text. You will see links to the recordings in the Syllabus.
  3. Read the Text again, carefully, using the dictionary at the back of the book. You will not be expected to use the entire Text vocabulary in your speech, but you should know what every word means.
  4. Prepare Text Exercises 1 and 2. You are not required to write anything for the Text class.
  5. Be ready to act out short scenes from the text. Text Exercise 3 may be helpful when preparing for this.

Assignment for the Mini-Video class

  1. Watch the «6 кадров» mini-videos assigned for the day (click the links in the Syllabus or use the link under On-line course materials). Make sure you understand every word; consult the transcript and glossary for the words that are hard to hear. Look up other unfamiliar words in a dictionary. Have the transcript in front of you in class. Use it when you are asked to discuss these scenes and to act out improvisations based on them.
  2. Make sure you can read aloud the dialog imitating the actors' intonation.
  3. Use the ChitterChatter website at https://chitterchatter.app/. As explained above, you should have created an account there with your Cornell email address. Select the assignment shown in the syllabus. It is typically based on one of the «6 кадров» mini-videos. Read the brief instructions for each assignment. After granting the website permission to use your microphone, you will hear your ChitterChatter AI partner ask you a question or say something to start a conversation.
  4. There is no right or wrong thing for you to say in response. Use your knowledge of the mini-video and your imagination to chat. If you do not understand what the partner said, you can ask it to explain, rephrase, or translate the unfamiliar phrase. You can also make general requests, such as "Speak slowly, please." or "Please use simple language." ChitterChatter knows the complete vocabulary in your textbook and will try to use words from the book, but it can use other words and phrases as well.
  5. The conversation will last about 5 minutes. At the end, you will have a sound recording and complete transcript of your dialog. Have the transcript in front of you in class: you and your classmates will discuss your conversation. You may be asked what you said (and why), etc. Although the subject matter is the same for everyone in class, the actual conversations will be somewhat different. Your teacher will guide these discussions and may ask her own questions, and you will also listen to your classmates' stories and discuss them.

Assignment for the Film class:

12 Chairs Interactive is a Cornell-only resource available from https://lexiconbridge.com/cloud. Create an account with a Cornel.edu email address, and you will be automatically subscribed to all titles. If you do not have access to a computer, use one in the Language Resource Center in Stimson Hall. You will watch the movie on the computer screen. On the same screen, you will see a window with various notes on the episode (summaries, transcripts, and descriptions). Every word in the notes has an English gloss: just click the word. Some words and phrases are linked to still images or short video clips. If you need help in using the site, read its on-screen Help (click the question mark button) or ask your teachers for a demonstration.

For the film work, the class is divided into two groups. Each student in the class should watch the entire assignment. In addition, each group is assigned a few scenes for more detailed study. See Syllabus for details.

When the Syllabus says "watch and understand..." you should watch the assignment a few times and try to understand as much dialog as you can. Consult the notes on the screen. If some of the dialog is difficult to understand, consult the on-screen transcript. Be prepared to answer questions about the entire assignment.

Then watch again the individual episodes that are shown in the syllabus as your group's assignment for "detailed study." Re-read the notes. Memorize as much of the dialog and the notes as you can. Be prepared to report on the episodes in class. Each scene's Summary will help you to report on the events. Each scene's Description will help you to report on the characters and objects. The stage remarks in the summaries and transcripts will help you to report on specific actions. Be prepared to answer other students' questions about the episode(s). You may also be asked to act out your scenes.

Meet with a classmate on Zoom and record a dialog or a story improvised on the basis of the episode you watched. The syllabus includes one or two questions for each scene assigned for detailed study; you can use these questions to guide your own creativity. Do not use any language that might be unfamiliar to your classmates. To avoid recording language mistakes, follow these steps:

  1. With your partner, compose the text of the skit or story and email it to your teacher. The earlier you send it, the sooner you will receive corrections, but in any case send it before 10pm on the day you want to receive feedback.
  2. When you receive a corrected version, analyze your mistakes.
  3. Use the corrected text to make the recording and email it (or a link to it) to your teacher. Use the recording feature of Zoom (to avoid having to meet in person) or any other method.

For each film class, prepare 2-3 questions on the assigned episodes. In class, your questions will be answered by your classmates as part of the discussion.

Assignment for the Verb class:

The purpose of this class is to learn how to conjugate all verbs listed in Exercise 7 (and practiced in all other Лексико-граммaтические упражнения) and to use them correctly in your own speech and writing.

  1. Work with all verb exercises in the book as well as the Intermediate Exercises on the COLLT site. COLLT will give you practice and help evaluate your progress. The green "skip" button allows you to go directly to the assigned Lesson. As you type to fill the blanks, use any source for reference: the glossary at the end of the Intermediate Russian book, the table on pp. 286, 287, the online Russian Dictionary Tree (under On-line course materials), or any other publication. The online exercises, just like the same ones in the book, show the use of the verbs in their most common meanings. Work until you get all the endings right and do not forget to click Finish. Ignore COLLT's message about leaving too many questions unanswered--that's because there are 18 Lessons in the book, and you're only doing one Lesson at a time.
  2. Instead of recording sound for the last page in the COLLT lesson, meet with a classmate and together compose a skit (a dialogue between two people) of about 8 to 12 lines. This work will be much more efficient and fun when you use a custom-designed AI "teaching assistant" at https://hita.ai. You should have already received an email invitation to register at the site with your Cornell address. If you have not, speak to your teacher. Here are the quick-start directions for working with HiTA once you are registered and logged in:

    You will be asked to “choose an Assistant,” where one of the options is Intermediate Russian, with an icon that shows a diamond. You will see the same diamond in the navigation bar on the left. Click either of these. You will see an updated navigation menu on the left.

    When you hover over Activities at top left, an Expand icon (a "V") will appear next to it. Click it.

    Click Lesson 1 Verb Skit at the top of the Activities list. That's where you will compose a skit for the 1st Lesson in the book. Read and follow the prompts.

    As you do when you interact with any AI bot, type your requests or responses at the prompt (the box with an icon that looks like a paper clip).

    From this point on, you are chatting with the bot that has been configured to help you compose a skit, as a dialog between two people, in Russian, using the vocabulary from the Intermediate Russian book and including in it at least 5 verbs from the current Lesson’s verb list. It is best to do this with a classmate so the two of you can act out your skit in class.

    When you have a question about Russian words, grammar, spelling, and the like, interact with the bot in English, and it will respond in English whenever it explains your mistakes or a language principle. All else will be in Russian.

    You should start by pasting your own draft and explaining how you want the bot to improve it. You may need to explain who your characters are, what they want to achieve, etc. You can insist on various technical details, e.g. ask it to display each character's speech on a new line. You can ask the bot to display a list of the verbs it used. You can ask it to show the correct endings for any Russian word. Or to show the relevant endings in boldface, etc.

    You are not required to submit your text. Just bring it to class, try to memorize it for fun delivery, and perform it for your classmates. If they have questions for you about your characters, use your imagination!
  3. For the Verb review classes, the assignment is the same except that no COLLT work is expected, and your skits can be based on any of the lessons you are asked to review.

A note about Grammar sections at the back of the book (also online under "Russian Verbs" in the On-line course materials section of the navigation bar):
These are entirely optional. If you can master the verbs simply by memorizing the conjugation patterns for various groups of verbs, you do not need to consult any other materials. If, however, you would like to try and find some sense in the seemingly chaotic Russian conjugation system, read the indicated sections in the "Overview of Russian Conjugation" in the textbook. You will not be responsible for knowing the rules or the principles described there; they are there only to help you learn the verbs analytically rather than by brute force. Still, brute force is also OK.

Assignment for the Translation class:

  1. Write the Translation exercise, called Перевод in each Lesson. It is always the last exercise in the Lesson. Start by reading--carefully!--the grammatical explanation that precede the actual English sentences for translation. Then write the Russian translation of each sentence. As you do this, review the necessary parts of Text (and Dialogs, if assigned; if the syllabus never assigns the Dialogs portion of the Lesson, then you are not responsible for this part of the translation exercise). Write or type your translation, submit it in class. (If you heard that we used to accept written homework on Canvas, that was necessary at the height of the epidemic, but has never been convenient.) If you want to keep the English text together with your Russian translations, you may want to download a zipped MS Word file with the English text of all Translation exercises, including the explanations.
  2. Make up four English sentences with the type of translation problems that are covered in this Lesson's Translation exercise. In class, you will ask your classmates to translate your sentences into Russian.

Assignment for the WWW class:

Read the assigned Web page and try to figure out what it says. Use a good online or printed dictionary (a paperback edition of a R-E and E-R dictionary by Kenneth Katzner should serve you very well), but do not try to translate every sentence. The art of reading in a foreign language requires a fair proportion of guessing. When reading Russian, an understanding of the grammatical structure of the sentence will often provide very good clues.

You will not be asked to discuss these stories or to use their Russian vocabulary. The purpose of this assignment is to practice reading and understanding.

Do not spend more than an hour and a half on any one day's assignment in this course.