1. to develop students' intermediate-level communicative competency
in the four language skills (speaking, listening, writing, reading)
2. to familiarize students with the structure of Russian and to
encourage demonstration of structural knowledge through performance
of the four language skills
3. to introduce students to aspects of Russian everyday culture
(forms of address, social behavior) and to elements of higher culture
(history, the arts, political system)

Specific Course Goals:

1. Reading and writing (in script) the cyrillic alphabet
2. Introduction of nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and
prepositional cases, present and past tenses, and basic vocabulary
3. Memorization of dialogues based on life topics (university, living
conditions, family, possessions), with emphasis on grammar,
pronunciation and intonation
4. Writing brief letters and descriptions of life topics and family
5. Reading newspaper ads, documents, letters

THE HONOR SECTION WILL BE TAUGHT BY PROF. MARIA SHARDAKOVA

Maria Shardakova (Ph.D., Bryn Mawr College, 2005)
Department is the new Director of Russian Language Instruction.
Professor Shardakova previously coordinated the Russian Language Program at
the University of Pennsylvania (2003-2010). She has taught a broad range of courses
in Russian language, pedagogy, second language acquisition, and Russian
linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania and also at Bryn Mawr College,
Middlebury Summer School, and the University of Maryland.

Her research focuses on second language acquisition, particularly interlanguage
pragmatics. Maria published a book Interlanguage Pragmatics of the Apology: How
Americans Acquire Sociolinguistic Competence in Russian. Currently, she works on
interlanguage humor collecting her data in Moscow and St. Petersburg.