How to choose the right Russian language textbook?
There are many different Russian language textbooks available today. Some of them are labeled RFL (Russian as a foreign language), some are labeled "for bilinguals", some are simply labeled with the age of the students or grade. How to choose the right textbook for your student? Today we will try to systematize the types of textbooks and relate them to existing methods.
So, speaking about children living outside the Russian-speaking environment, I want to emphasize one extremely important thing: the Russian language skills of such children can vary greatly on a scale from "don't speak at all, don't understand anything" to "speak perfectly well, understand everything, read Russian books in the original" and all levels in between (see the chart).
What does knowing Russian depend on? On age? On the language of the family? The grade of school? More likely no than yes.
How then do we determine which textbook to choose and which program to follow? What should we base our choice on?
Determining a child's language level is really not that difficult and does not require any special knowledge. In my consultations with parents, I usually offer them three options:
- He speaks, he understands
- Doesn't speak, understands
- Doesn't speak, doesn't understand
This is a fairly simple chart that tells us where roughly "where" a particular child is.
The first option reflects the level of the child for whom a textbook labeled "for bilinguals" may be suitable. Such textbooks follow the simplified Russian school system (and I never advise taking textbooks for Russian schools for "internal use") and teach "literacy", including orthography.
The third option reflects the level of a child who needs to learn a language using a foreign language method, or from scratch. They will be discussed below.
It is also important to us as teachers how quickly parents respond to this question.
If they choose the first or third option immediately and without hesitation, we can conclude that the child has a confident level of RNL (Russian as a native language) or RFL (Russian as a foreign language) respectively.
Второй вариант – самый сложный и вариативный. Здесь можно подбирать учебники с упрощенной лексикой, однако скорее всего придется в той или иной степени использовать методику РКИ или ее элементы.
It is important not to jump to conclusions and immediately recommend parents to buy this or that textbook. Children guess a lot of things from the context, so the parent may not always have a realistic idea of the child's language level, or the mother may "overestimate" the success in the eyes of the teacher ("to get into a higher group"). A personal meeting with the child will help you to check how well he or she understands Russian.
Even after you've chosen a textbook that suits you, I always suggest that you spend a lesson or two on it to "try it out" and make sure it's right for you.
Why is it important to choose the right language level? Is it possible to choose a "harder" textbook so that the child learns Russian faster?
Imagine you have moved to a new country and you don't know the local language at all. To learn it, you decide to go to a school nearby. First grade.
The teacher welcomes you and the other students into the classroom, tells you how the class will be run, shows you the classroom and the books. How much will you understand? Probably not. And to learn the language using this method, you will have to sit for a couple of years and yourself, by trial and error, to guess the meaning of many words. And in practice, very often such children simply drop out of classes because of the high level of stress and low efficiency of classes.
And if you were in a group of foreigners, you would be introduced to the structure of the language, given basic vocabulary, and you would be able to use this knowledge in your life in just a few lessons!
This example shows how important it is to choose the right level and not to "pull" a child into a difficult group.
In the next article we will talk about the differences between textbooks on beginner's Russian and textbooks on Russian as a native language.
How do you check the language level of your students? Share in the comments!
