Russian 4 (RUSS20005)

The overall goal of this intermediate Russian subject is to enable students to move from the private to the public sphere of discourse so that they begin to engage with more sophisticated cultural and social topics in listening, reading, writing and speaking. Students will encounter visual and printed texts that allow them to view multiple perspectives and genres in both written and oral forms (literature, film and information texts). Instead of the traditional approach to language instruction that is structured around a sequence of grammatical topics, this subject relies on the texts themselves to provide the textual, informational and lexico-grammatical features that serve as the basis for developing students' language abilities.

The subject's emphasis on improving students' ability to narrate, compare and contrast, express opinions and establish causal relationships in speaking and writing lays the groundwork for the historical texts used in Russian 5 and 6.