Friedberg_Nila-2021

comes in two types. The first type is narration- or description-driven , where students learn lexical or grammatical structures that later help them tell a story or describe a character; the structure in question may or may not appear in the target text (see Babel’s “The King” or the chapters on Il’f and Petrov’s The Twelve Chairs). The second type is interpretation-driven (see Reyfman 2014): for example, in assignments of this sort, learners become aware of normative grammatical or lexical patterns that will later help them“decipher” a character who deviates from the norm (see Babel’s “My First Goose”). As Reyfman observes, merely showing students where deviations from the norm occur “will not train the students themselves to uncover places where a writer deliberately uses faulty grammar to create a particular effect. It is therefore worth spending some time teaching them to expect all kinds of deviations from the linguistic norm in a literary text, coaching them to detect the obvious ones, and finally training them to see the ones that they are inclined to expect the least, namely deliberate anomalous usage” (Reyfman 2014: 54). Both assignment 5 and 6 are appropriate for Intermediate High or higher levels; the vocabulary or grammar can be later reviewed in assignment 19, if there is time. The goal of the grammatical or lexical commentary is not only to provide students with linguistic support, but also to familiarize themwith the work of various linguists (e.g., Iu. Apresian, M. Gorham, L. Grenoble, T. Ianko, I. Kovtunova, O. Kisselev, M. Krongauz, E. Paducheva, D. Rozental, M. Shardakova, N. Shvedova, O. Yokoyama, and others). Assignment 7 deals with stylistics and in some cases asks students to check the meaning or stylistic labels of words on www.gramota.ru, or to guess the meaning of and paraphrase dialectal or figurative language. It is appropriate for ACTFL’s Advanced or Superior-level students, though due to the shortness of some of these phrases, and their importance for text comprehension, Intermediate level students can guess their meaning or look them up in the dictionary, too. Specific literary terms for the given figures of speech are omitted, insofar as the book’s focus is language acquisition rather than literary theory; but, depending on students’ interest and proficiency level, the instructor may wish to point out instances of defamiliarization / остранение (when familiar things are represented as unfamiliar) or synecdoche (when a part is used to describe the whole) in Bulgakov; metaphors or similes in Babel; etc. In class, students work on the section DISCUSSION AND TEXTUAL ANALYSIS (ОБСУЖДЕНИЕ И АНАЛИЗ ТЕКСТА) , which includes assignments 8–15. Assignment 8 is a warm-up conversation. Assignment 9 allows students to practice paraphrase and definitions, an Advanced-level skill; it recycles the information they checked at home