Golosa: A Basic Course in Russian, Book 1 (3rd Edition) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0130494569 ISBN 13: 9780130494566

Publisher: Pearson College Div, 2002

Synopsis

Golosa is part of a two-volume series communicative approach to Introductory Russian that is designed to help learners reach the Intermediate range in speaking and listening plus reading and writing. Each volume of Golosa includes a main textbook, a workbook with audio drills and written exercises, and an audio program that runs approximately ten hours per volume and includes listening comprehension exercises, dialogs, conversations, and rapid-pace oral drills. In addition, a Companion Website offers additional lexical and grammatical exercises from each chapter plus links to authentic Russian websites, and the entire Golosa audio program is available online. Each unit in the program revolves around a theme (university, family, etc.), and follows the same basic format: introduction of basic vocabulary for the chapter theme, listening to introductory conversations, short dialogs with activities and role-play practice, practice in listening and reading with emphasis on strategies, grammar study and practice in both oral and written form, and written workbook exercises that go from mechanical skill-building to creative skill-using. For individuals being introduced to?and learning? the Russian language.

About this title

From the Back Cover

With its careful balance of communication and structure, Golosa has been the pathway to contemporary Russian for English-speaking students throughout the post-Soviet era. Students learning with Golosa work towards functional competence in all four skills while building a solid grammatical base. This foundation enables them to increase their proficiency through additional study.

The Golosa program consists of two texts (Book 1 and Book 2), two student workbooks, a Web-based audio and video program, and additional Web-based exercises. Each book offers realistic communicative activities (in listening, speaking, reading, and writing) that are designed for use in a learner-centered classroom. Students acquire personalized vocabulary to express individual needs and practice strategies that promote the balanced development of productive and receptive skills. The problem-solving approach in Golosa leads students to become independent, confident speakers of Russian.

The third edition of Golosa, Book 1, has been revised to provide a complete grammatical base. In addition, the third edition web site www.prenhall.com/golosa features a complete video program with authentic interviews appropriate for the students' level of comprehension. The web site also provides a regularly updated set of additional resources for teachers and students that further promotes independent, individualized work with the Russian language and realia. The entire audio program — nearly 20 hours of recordings — is available on the Golosa web site as well as on CD.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Golosa: A Basic Course in Russian is the third edition of an introductory Russian-language program. It strikes a true balance between communication and structure. It takes a contemporary approach to language learning by focusing on the development of functional competence in the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), as well as the expansion of cultural knowledge. It also provides comprehensive explanations of Russian grammar along with the structural practice students need to build accuracy.

Golosa is divided into two books of ten units each. Each book is accompanied by a fully integrated Lab Manual/Workbook, audio and video recordings available on the World Wide Web, a web-based supplement of exercises, and the Instructor's Resource Manual. The units are organized thematically, and each unit contains dialogs, texts, exercises, and other material designed to enable students to read, speak, and write about the topic, as well as to understand simple conversations. The systematic grammar explanations and exercises in Golosa enable students to develop a conceptual understanding and partial control of all basic Russian structures, including the declensions of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns; verb conjugation; and verb aspect. This strong structural base enables students to accomplish the linguistic tasks in Golosa and prepares them for further study of the language.

Students successfully completing Books 1 and 2 of Golosa will be able to perform the following skill-related tasks.

Listening. Understand simple face-to-face conversations about daily routine, home, family, school, and work. Understand simple airport announcements, radio and television advertisements, personal interviews, and brief news items such as weather forecasts. Get the gist of more complicated scripts such as short lectures and news items.

Speaking. Use complete sentences to express immediate needs and interests. Hold a simple face-to-face conversation consisting of questions and answers with a Russian interlocutor about daily routine, home, family, school, and work. Discuss basic likes and dislikes in literature and the arts. Manage simple transactional situations in stores, post offices, hotels, dormitories, libraries, and so on.

Reading. Read signs and public notices. Understand common printed advertisements and announcements. Understand simple personal and business correspondence. Get the gist of important details in brief articles of topical interest such as news reports on familiar topics, weather forecasts, and entries in reference books. Understand significant parts of longer articles on familiar topics and brief literary texts.

Writing. Write short notes to Russian acquaintances, including invitations, thank you notes, and simple directions. Write longer letters providing basic biographical information. Write simple compositions about daily routine, home, family, school, and work.

In addition, students will grasp the essentials of culture necessary for active and receptive skills: background information on the topics covered in each unit. Control sociolinguistic aspects of Russian necessary for basic interaction, such as forms of address, greeting and leave-taking, giving and accepting compliments and invitations, and telephone etiquette. Become familiar with some of Russia's cultural heritage: famous writers and their works, as well as other figures in the arts.

For those who wish to continue their study of Russian, Golosa provides a firm footing not only in the discrete skills, but in terms of grammatical base as well.

Features of the Golosa Program

• Goals
  Objectives are stated explicitly for each book and unit in terms of language tools (grammar and lexicon), skills, and cultural knowledge.



• Focused attention to skills development
  Each language skill (speaking, reading, writing, listening) is addressed in its own right. Abundant activities are provided to promote the development of competence and confidence in each skill area.



• Modularity
  Golosa incorporates the best aspects of a variety of methods, as appropriate to the material. All skills are presented on an equal footing, but instructors may choose to focus on those which best serve their students' needs without violating the structural integrity of individual units or the program as a whole.



• Authenticity and cultural relevance
  Each unit contains authentic materials and realistic communicative activities for all skills. The Golosa Web page updates materials to account for fast-changing events in Russia.



• Spiraling approach
  Students are exposed repeatedly to similar functions and structures at an increasing level of complexity. Vocabulary and structures are consistently and carefully recycled. Vocabulary patterns of reading texts are recycled into subsequent listening scripts.



• Learner-centered approach
  Each unit places students into communicative settings to practice the four skills. In addition to core lexicon, students acquire personalized vocabulary to express individual needs.



• Comprehensive coverage of beginning grammar
  Communicative goals do not displace conceptual control of the main points of Russian grammar. By the end of Book 1, students have had meaningful contextual exposure to all the cases in both singular and plural, as well as tense/aspects. Book 2 spirals out the basic grammar and fills in those items needed for basic communication.



• Abundance and variety of exercise material: on-paper, and on the World Wide Web, interactive grammar exercises plus authentic audio and video
  Oral drills and written exercises progress from mechanical to contextualized to personalized, open-ended activities. The wide variety in exercises and activities ensures that a range of learning styles is served. Updated exercises are available on the Golosa Web Page. The web-based audio program contains nearly twenty hours of recordings (in streamable and downloadable MP3). The web-based video allows students to watch authentic, unscripted interviews with Russians from all walks of life. The interviews are , appropriate for students both topically and by level of comprehension.



• Learning strategies
  Students acquire strategies that help them develop both the productive and receptive skills. This problem-solving approach leads students to become independent and confident in using the language.



• Phonetics and intonation
  Pronunciation is fully integrated and practiced with the material in each unit rather than covered in isolation. Intonation training includes requests, commands, nouns of address, exclamations, and non-final pauses, in addition to declaratives and interrogatives.

Organization of the Golosa Program

The Golosa package consists of three components: textbooks, student Workbooks, and World Wide Web audio, video, and cultural supplements. The course is divided into two books of ten units each. Every unit maintains the following organization.

Overview

The opening page of each unit provides a clear list of the communicative tasks the unit contains, of the grammatical material it introduces, and of the cultural knowledge it conveys.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pearson College Div
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0130494569
• ISBN 13: 9780130494566
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 398
• Editor: Robin Richard