Course Overview

Stage 5

In the 200-hour Russian course the students work with booklets and handwriting practice (25 booklets for Year 9 and 25 for Year 10). Students receive 4 course cassettes on loan (at present they are being digitised and very soon students will be receiving the CDs instead of the cassettes). Students are expected to return written and oral work on a weekly basis.

Regular phone contact with their teacher and recording of their oral work allow the students to do their speaking practice and discuss any questions they might have regarding the course. Email is also used to communicate with students.

4 modules with CDs are used to incorporate recent changes in Russian.

Students are encouraged to use the internet for research purposes and to complete the projects. Year 9 and 10 projects develop students’ skills in Russian (language), in IT, moving between cultures and making linguistic connections.

Educational programmes via satellite from Russia are being recorded and used as well.

Stage 6

Russian for Background Speakers

The Preliminary course students work with the textbook Temp – 2 Parts 1 and 2 and 20 booklets with 15 course cassettes (at present they are being digitised). Additional Learning Materials (4 Modules with 4 CDs) are also used.

Literature: students study one contemporary short story.

Cultural events are organised during the year.

The Year 12 students work with the textbook Temp 2 – Parts 3 and 4 and 25 booklets with 10 Course Cassettes that are being digitised at present. Four additional Modules with 4 CDs are also used. Students study 10 prescribed texts.

In Year 11 and 12 regular phone contact with the teacher, the use of e-mail and recording of their oral work allow the students to do their speaking practice and discuss any questions they might have regarding the course.

Russian newspapers and magazines (both local and from Russia) are used.

Regular Face to Face lessons at Open High School are organised during the year.

Russian TV is used to familiarise the students with new developments in the language and to study contemporary issues and literature. Students are expected to return written and oral work on a weekly basis.

Stage 6 Syllabi (From Board of Studies)

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National Anthem

National Emblem

Country Map

Country Overview

By far the world?s largest country, Russia is almost twice the size of the next largest country, Canada. Russia sprawls across eastern Europe and northern Asia. It possesses mineral resources unmatched by any other country. Four-fifths of the people live in the European part of Russia, west of the Ural Mountains. The capital, Moscow, is an administrative, commercial, industrial, and cultural hub in the heart of European Russia.

Official Language Of

Russia; Belarus; Kazakhstan; Kyrgyzstan; Abkhazia; South Ossetia; Transnistria; and Gagauzia.

Total Number of Speakers

Primary language: 147 million; Secondary language: 113 million

Language Family

Indo-European

Writing System

Cyrillic alphabet

Language Overview

Russian is the most widely spoken language of Eurasia and the most widespread of the Slavonic languages. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages. Within the Slavic branch, Russian is one of three living members of the East Slavic group, the other two being Belarusian and Ukrainian. Written examples of East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onwards. While Russian preserves much of East Slavonic synthetic-inflectional structure and a Common Slavonic word base, modern Russian exhibits a large stock of borrowed international vocabulary for politics, science, and technology. A language of great political importance in the 20th century, Russian is one of the official languages of the United Nations.