Friedberg_Nila-2021

for assignment 1. Assignment 10 involves narration, with students typically given a list of questions, a list of keywords, and a list of connector words; the goal is for them to produce a coherent narrative that would contain answers to the questions. Assignments 8–10 are appropriate for Intermediate High students aiming to become Advanced. Assignment 11 asks students to analyze quotes from the text, paying attention not only to language, but also to character interpretation (e.g., who said what and why). Likewise, assignment 12 typically consists of two excerpts for rereading, which provide students with an opportunity to go beyond discussion of basic plot elements and perform a close reading. (The teacher can split the class into two groups and assign each group one passage, depending on the appropriate difficulty.) One of the questions for the rereading passage asks students to select an adjective from a list and explain how it applies, or does not apply, to the character. The adjectives on the list were chosen strategically: they include words from the published “lexical minimum” word lists (Andriushina 2014) that students have to master in order to pass the Test of Russian as a Foreign Language during their study abroad and attain the second certification level in Russian proficiency. Some chapters use vocabulary of an even higher level: e.g., assignment 6 in the Platonov and Zoshchenko chapters includes the “lexical minimum” words from Russia’s Third certification proficiency level (Andriushina 2014). In this respect, the textbook is a preparation for those aiming to study abroad. Assignment 13 constitutes a“rhetorical frame,”where students are given the“skeleton” of a mini-essay or speech with some words filled in, the rest to be supplied. In most cases, this comes in the form of a speech, with the student pretending to be a certain character, or a lawyer defending or indicting this character in court; or pretending to be a party official banning the given writer’s work, or the writer defending himself. The frames go beyond teaching students to speak or write in paragraphs, prompting them to create extended paragraphs. For example, they show that to prove your idea to an opponent, you can first acknowledge and describe the opponent’s point of view, then list the flaws in that point of view, and then give the opponent advice. To describe a person, you can first talk about the way the person is perceived by others, and contrast it with how you perceive the person; alternatively, a first impression of the person can be described, then the circumstances or events that led this impression to change. All these devices are applicable in more than one situation, and are especially helpful for students who will be taking oral proficiency interviews to determine their linguistic progress. Assignment 13 may be particularly useful to students interested in literary history;