Description

FSI – Learning Russian Fast with FSI Russian FASTFor all the excellent courses produced by the Foreign Service Institute, a critical gap was a course covering the Russian language. This is quite stunning in light of the Cold War and the sheer volume of speakers. Whatever the reason, the Foreign Service Institute finally rectified this and created an FSI Russian Course in the early 1990s.The Russian FAST (Familiarization and Short Term Training) is a practical survival course.This FSI Russian FAST audio and text course is designed to teach and prepare students for life in Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union by giving them the necessary basic skills in the language for everyday life.The course is structured to provide the student with realistic situations encountered in everyday life. The course includes an introduction to the Russian alphabet. The course is designed to inculcate several key principles critical to a student of the Russian language.The course aims to teach the student the ability to ask simple questions pertains to daily practical needs. This enables the student to know how to get something done and how to elicit necessary information.As part of this goal, the course covers key Russian vocabulary words that would be given in the answers to the student’s questions.Russian FAST teaches numbers in the context of prices, phone numbers, addresses, etc. especially larger numbers which are in use today. The student learns to recognize and understand numbers in written as well as in spoken form.The Russian FAST course teaches the student to read and understand street signs, signs in the metro, and other signs related to transportation, in stores, hotels, etc. The ability to read practical items like concert /theater programs, menus, instructions for guests in hotels, rules for using public transport, hours of operation of various establishments, are also covered.Upon the completion of the course, the student will also be familiar with telephone conversations and edicate.The ability to introduce yourself, and others when necessary; to appropriately greet people and to distinguish between different levels of formality and informality in the language are all included topics.The course also includes a brief review of geography, history, and politics of Russian and other former Soviet Republics.The course includes grammar but minimizes the extent of this to the content of the scenarios that are presented.