Russian is a highly inflected language and, even at the elementary stage, requires a certain basic awareness of how meaning is organised and expressed. Students will need to acquire a knowledge and understanding of the following grammatical categories and concepts to build the firm foundation that is a prerequisite to enabling them to pursue their study of the language independently.
- Syntactic categories (parts of speech)
- Agreement (noun and nominal modifier; subject and predicate)
- Gender and number
- Syntactic relations (case)
- Morphology (derivational and inflectional)
- Temporal relations (tense and aspect)
General Activity/Theme
Learning about language from target language material
Performance Targets
- Understanding the main elements of target language material (newspaper, magazine articles, etc.) dealing with language-related topics such as:
- language as a social, regional and educational issue
- changes in language and language use (new words, spelling conventions, foreign influences, etc.)
- Exploring short extracts from target language literary texts as sources of linguistic information and illustration
General Activity/Theme
Exploring meaning
Performance Targets
- Abstracting the main points from a spoken or written target language text
- Working out the implicit inferences of statements made in a spoken or written target language text
- Guessing intelligently at the meaning of target language forms on the basis of related forms in the target language and/or other languages (e.g. arriving at the meaning of a noun from that of a related verb)
- Exploring the workings of the target language through such activities as: making meaningful target language sentences out of jumbled target language words, phrases or clauses
- making short pieces of meaningful and coherent target language text out of jumbled or gapped target language sentences
General Activity/Theme
Relating language to attitude
Performance Targets
- Recognising the general "tone" (ironic, angry, flippant, etc.) of a spoken or written target language text on the basis of its lexis, grammar and intonation, and punctuation
- Identifying attitudes (e.g. critical, supportive, approving, disapproving) on the basis of a speaker's or writer's use of language
General Activity/Theme
Talking and writing about your experience of the target language
Performance Targets
- Discussing aspects of your experience of the target language, such as:
- how long you have been learning it
- where you have been learning it
- the advantages of learning it in terms of its use in Europe and in the world
- what you find easy and difficult about it
- what you like and dislike about the way you have been learning it
- Describing and commenting on any ways in which you have made your own personal contribution to the process of learning the target language
- Describing any ways in which learning the target language has affected your present life (e.g. friendships, enjoyment of books, films, music, etc., attitude towards other culture) and/or future prospects (e.g. travel, career possibilities, further language learning)
General Activity/Theme
Consulting reference materials (e.g. dictionaries and grammars) relating to the vocabulary and grammar of the target language
Performance Targets
- Using vocabulary correctly and appropriately with the help of dictionaries
- Learning to cope with simple grammatical terminology relating to the target language
- Using target language forms correctly on the basis of explanations in grammars relating to the target language written in English or Irish or in the target language