University Russian Teaching Reference Book, Fourth Edition

Author: Wang Fengying
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 1999-11-01
Features: Language is a communicative tool. The ultimate goal of foreign language teaching is to cultivate students' ability to communicate orally and in writing. Instruction in the basic stage should fully implement the communicative principle, enabling students to master the basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translation. The "Teaching Syllabus for the Basic Stage of Russian Majors in Higher Education" provides specific requirements for language knowledge, speech skills, and communicative competence at the end of the second year. To meet the syllabus requirements, we believe that teaching in the second-year practical courses should adhere to the principle of "student-centered, textbook-based, efficiency-focused, and balanced oral and written training." Students should continuously consolidate the basic word forms learned in the first year while absorbing and mastering new vocabulary and grammar in communicative activities, solidly improving their oral and written communicative skills.
Student-centered means placing the student at the "center," with teachers providing concise explanations and ample practice, avoiding a one-sided lecture. Textbook-based means sticking to the textbook, avoiding the expansion of vocabulary and grammar points that might hinder mastery of the textbook content and oral/written skill training. Efficiency-focused means increasing the volume of student training, requiring active participation in classroom practice and preparation, thereby reducingness and procrastination in teaching, improving classroom efficiency, and achieving reinforcement. Balanced oral and written training means coordinating the training and requirements for both oral and written skills, avoiding overemphasis on one aspect, especially the neglect of written skills.
"University Russian" (Dongfang), Volume 4, is designed for the fourth semester. Compared to the first three volumes in the series, it differs in structure and thematic content. In terms of thematic content, there is an increase in topics related to general conditions, society, and culture. Additionally, four literary works have been added. Within each thematic structure, the main text leads students to provide relevant information and language knowledge, aiming to develop their monologue skills and lay the foundation for advanced monologue teaching. Dialogues have shifted from situational dialogues to multi-person dialogues focused on functional-semantic training. Each dialogue provides one or two examples of motivation sentences, allowing students to flexibly apply acquired language knowledge to express agreement, doubt, opposition, consent, or rebuttal, breaking the limitations of traditional situational dialogues to review, consolidate, and systematically organize learned knowledge.
Volume 4 of "University Russian" (Dongfang) serves as a bridge between the basic and advanced stages. The teaching tasks for this stage are:
1. Teaching commonly used vocabulary and sentence patterns for each topic, developing speech skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing, with a focus on monologue skills while also improving dialogue skills.
2. Integrating speech training to enhance pronunciation and intonation quality, strengthening reading aloud exercises.
3. Improving students' reading and independent learning abilities through reading texts and completing various assignments.
4. Enhancing students' ability to summarize, expand, capture information, and judge its accuracy through listening texts.
The teaching process should strive to implement the functional-communicative principle, cultivating students' communicative skills. In the fourth semester, while teaching language knowledge, the focus should be on developing students' monologue skills, such as narration, argumentation, and description. For example, when studying a topic, students are provided with several tourist routes in China and are encouraged to use their acquired language knowledge to describe the travel process, observations, and feelings. During teaching, efforts should be made to avoid a teacher-dominated, student-supplemented teaching dynamic. Instead, an active and vibrant learning environment should be created, centered around the teacher, where students think critically, participate actively, and develop their speech skills.