HOW TO WORK WITH THE BASIC COURSE

So, here you are – ready to work with the basic course.

The Basic Course consists of a number of lessons that follow one story line with the same main characters. Each lesson includes a specific set of lexico-grammatical exercises. You are introduced to a lesson topic , topic-related points of grammar and lexical and syntactic models. Then you have an opportunity to practice, repeat and drill the material by doing exercises that follow each lesson. As you progress through the lessons, you will master increasingly more complicated grammar and vocabulary. There are two ways to get to a certain lesson: you can click either on a “Lesson 1”, ”Lesson 2”, etc. button on the left, or click on a category title marked in red (Lesson Topic, Models, Grammar or Exercises).

Thus, the learner has an opportunity to make a choice. One option is to proceed from one lesson to the next, as they appear in the course, gradually mastering language knowledge and skills. The second option is to choose specific topics, grammar points, models, or exercises that are of a particular interest to the learner.

Please, note that the upper line with the course title Time to Speak Russian! will remain unchanged. To the right of the title, you will find the Basic Course Directory buttons: Library, Cultural Information, Testing, Vocabulary, etc. At any time, you can take a break from working on a certain lesson and go back to the course main (home) page and find a section you are interested in.

Now let’s take a look at the lesson structure.

Each lesson includes the following sections:

• Scene (or Scenes)
• Vocabulary
• Test
• Cultural Information

The section titles are marked in red, and are clickable.

On the main lesson page you can find the following information about the lesson: what topic is introduced in each scene, what grammar aspects and active lexical modles are presented, and what lesson topic-related Cultural Information you can find there. An arrow on the left will allow you to go back to the previous page whenever you choose.

Next, let's look at the basic and most important element of the course - i.e. the scene.

The Scene structure

Each scene consists of the following elements:

• Before Viewing Exercises
• Dialogue
• Postviewing exercises to test the dialogue comprehension
• grammar Grammar notes explaining grammar points introduced in a video episode:
• Scene Vocabulary
• Exercises: phonetic, grammatical and lexical; written and oral

Next to each element, you can see its graphic symbol that is reproduced in the left column. Please, keep this in mind, as you start doing exercisises for each scene. On the left, you will see a long column with symbols. It’s upper part directs you to the scene, and its lower part – to the main lesson page.

Before Viewing Exercises include lexical and grammatical exercises that should be done before viewing a film scene: they introduce new vocabulary, help a learner to memorize new lexical units and test himself/herself, and emphasize the key phrases for the scene. Under the Before Viewing Exercises category, the following exercises are offered : Learn New Words, Test Yourself, Learn New Expressions”.

In the first exercise, Learn New Words, you are introduced to the new words that you will come across in the dialogue. You look at a picture, read a caption underneath the picture, and hear a voice pronouncing the word. "Forward" and "back" arrows allow the navigation.

The second exercise, Test Yourself, will help you memorize and drill the new vocabulary. You are presented with randomly placed pictures and captions. You are asked to match each picture to a caption by "dragging" the right caption to the picture, and then to click on the "Check" button. If you make a mistake, you can continue doing the exercise as many times as needed.

In the third exercise, Learn New Expressions, you will see a new word and an expression with the word, and hear a voice pronouncing the expression. Next to it, you will find its translation. Your goal is to memorize the meaning of the word and expression and the way they sound, and then to pronounce them yourself trying to mimic the announcer's pronunciation the best you can.

Now you can move on to viewing a scene from the film. The scene consists of several dialogues, and the viewing options include: without subtitles, with Russian subtitles, with subtitles in a foreign language, or with a dialogue text shown on the screen with translation.

After the scene viewing, move on to exercises that will test your comprehension of the scene . The Comprehension Test exercises will get more difficult as you progress toward the end of the course.

Grammar notes contain information about new grammar points found in the scene. And the scene vocabulary presents all of the words found in the scene.

In the Exercises section, you will find the lexical, grammatical and speech exercises. As we tried to make them diverse and entertaining, you might be asked to play an interactive game or do an interactive exercise.