RUSSIAN LANGUAGE 1

Degree course: 
Academic year when starting the degree: 
2023/2024
Year: 
1
Academic year in which the course will be held: 
2023/2024
Seat of the course: 
Como - Università degli Studi dell'Insubria
Credits: 
10
Standard lectures hours: 
120
Requirements: 

No prerequisite knowledge of the Russian language is required to take
this course.

Final Examination: 
Orale

Learning will be verified through a final exam aimed at evaluating various
language skills (between written/oral comprehension and written/oral
expression), following the descriptors developed by the Common
European Framework of Reference for languages (2001).
It consists of a written test and an oral test. The written test is
preparatory to the oral one.
The written test is divided into: morpho-syntactic and lexical test,
consisting of a series of exercises of various types; written production
test (such as, for example, writing a short informal letter or a short
narrative text) and comprehension of a short narrative or non-fiction text.
The ability to understand will be tested thanks to a series of questions in
Russian relating to the text given, to which the student is required to
answer in writing. The use of vocabulary is not allowed. In the written test
the spelling and grammar correctness, the expressive properties and the
ability to understand Russian will be assessed.
The oral exam is divided into a conversation with the language expert
and a final oral exam on the theoretical part of the course with the
teacher. In the conversation, students will have to demonstrate the
ability to maintain a dialogue on the topics studied during the exercises,
expressing themselves correctly and with good pronunciation. In the final
theoretical part they will have to demonstrate that they have acquired a
theoretical knowledge of the Russian language, to be able to describe its
functioning and specificities. Each of the tests is considered passed if
each of its parts is evaluated with a result equal to or greater than 18/30.

Assessment: 
Voto Finale

The course, aimed at absolute beginners, aims to develop the skills
necessary to interact with Russian speakers, effectively albeit at an
elementary level, in the most common situations of everyday life. It
intends to provide students with sufficient theoretical knowledge to think
over morphosyntactic structures.
The course aims to allow students who do not have any knowledge of the
Russian language to reach a level of linguistic competence comparable to
that of A1 (Уровень Элементарного Общения - Breakthrough Level).
EXPECTED LEARNING RESULTS
At the end of the course, the student will be able to:
1. Understand short oral and written texts on topics related to the
personal and social sphere;
2. produce short oral texts on trace or autonomously to describe people
or situations in an elementary way;
3. ask for information;
4. interact with questions / answers on issues of daily life;
5. fill in an elementary form;
6. write short personal letters;
7. produce simple translations to and from the source language;
8. reproduce texts written on dictation or by integrating them at the
request of the teacher with the correct linguistic structures;
9. reflect on the Russian language system (phonology, morphology,
syntax, lexicon) and its related linguistic functions.

Morphology and syntax: grammatical categories (gender, number, case);
strong and weak inflection patterns (nouns and adjectives, pronouns
personal, possessive, demonstrative, interrogative, relative); numerals
cardinals and ordinals; meaning and main uses of the cases; regency of
the most frequently used verbs and prepositions; adverbs and predicative
adverbs; the verb "to be" and the construction that expresses possession
("to have"); verbal inflection: present, past, simple and compound future;
consonant alternations, loss / addition of suffixes; some irregularities;
reflexive verbs. Simple, enunciative, interrogative, negative propositions.

During the first module the following topics will be dealt with:
- Typological characteristics of Slavic languages. Typological features of
the Russian language.
- The Russian graphics system.
- Phonetic and phonological system: main oppositions. The vowel
reduction. The phonetic transcription.
- Accent (position and patterns), intonation (intonative patterns of type 1,
2, 3, 4), variants of the orthoepic norm.
- Notions of gender, number, chance and animosity.
- Strong and weak inflection patterns (nouns and adjectives, personal,
possessive, demonstrative, interrogative, relative pronouns).
- The cardinal and ordinal numerals.
During the second module the following topics will be dealt with:
- Verbal system. Conjugations (1-2), modes (infinitive, indicative and
imperative) and tenses (present, past and future). The category of the
imperfective and perfective verbal aspect. The category of movement
and directionality.
- Adverbs and adverbial phrases.
- Time expressions. Rental expressions.
- Expression of negation;
- Expression of the modality;
- Basic elements of syntax. Simple, enunciative, interrogative, negative
propositions.

Convenzionale

The course will be delivered through lectures that will use Power-Point
presentations, which will then be uploaded to the course folder on the
ELearning platform.
It will be complemented by interactive language exercises held by
linguistic experts, aimed at consolidating and expanding communication
in the four skills. The subject of the laboratory lessons are: reading,
writing and listening exercises; grammar exercises; expansion of the
lexicon; practice in oral production (dialogical and monological).
Frequency of the laboratory lessons is mandatory and is part of the
overall time commitment. Students will have to carry out self-study
activities, which will be verified in the classroom. At the language
laboratories, the sharing of acquired skills will be enacouraged with the
purpose of training for mutual collaboration and comparison. There will
be tests to check the skills acquired.
Students will also have access to a wide range of resources for deepening
and strengthening knowledge of material learned in the self-access
Codice Descrizione
language laboratory.
Assessment methods

The program is divided into two modules.
Frequency mode
Continuous attendance is strongly recommended. Non-attending students
are requested to contact the teacher at the beginning of the academic
year for an additional program.
Mother tongue students:
Only those who have an excellent spoken and written knowledge of
standard Russian (литературный язык) will be considered as native
Russian speakers. Native speakers will have to study the theoretical part
of the course in order to explain the phonetic and morphosyntactic
peculiarities of the Russian language system during the exam.
Office hours: Office 2.2. Via Bossi 5, 22100 Como or, if this is not possible
due to force majeure, online via Teams. Students are invited to contact
the teacher via email to make an appointment.

Professors

Grishanova Ekaterina