Reader in International Affairs

The SAIS Russian Readeris a textbook written especially for students of Russia interested in its international and domestic affairs, its trade and economy, and its national security issues. The book seeks to develop functional proficiency in reading skills and is intended for Intermediate High[1] readers of Russian. It uses a wide range of exercises which promote reading competence and help learners to cross the threshold to the Advanced level with politics, economics, and national security as areas of particular strength. Each chapter is based on directly applicable topics: international relations, economic affairs, energy and the environment, social issues, etc.

The book has enough built-in modularity to allow a teacher, or a self-learner, to choose some sections and to ignore others. The structure of each lesson is self-explanatory. It starts with Pre-Text Exercises which teach strategies to get facts from newspaper reports, using context to help build students vocabulary. In the early lessons, students learn to skim and scan for as much useful information as can be found in shorter texts. Toward the end of the book, students search for immediate information in longer narratives and descriptions.

The background informationexercise is meant to teach prediction techniques. It activates the knowledge which the student already has by encouraging the student to think about the subject discussed in the article and anticipate what is going to be read. A list of words and expressionsfacilitates the process of getting facts from the story. The cognatesexercise sensitizes students to the words which they know without realizing it. A miniature of the main text is basically the gist of the whole story and will make the job of understanding the longer text easier. A list of questionsfocuses the students attention on the facts they should scan the text for.

The Main Text does not contain any complex syntactical structures or stylistic or idiomatic difficulties inaccessible to readers who have not attained the Advanced level.

Post-Text Exercises are meant to help students to internalize vocabulary by providing opportunities to recognize words and expressions seen in the main text and react to them. Students learn to follow the thematic and rhetorical structure of a text which allows them to zero in on those parts of a text that are most likely to be more interesting. The close-readingsection in particular teaches reading strategies crucial for extracting detailed information hidden in complicated grammatical structures.

The Supplementary Material gives students a chance to read another text on the same subject using much of the same thematic vocabulary.

[1] The term Intermediate Highand Advancedare taken from the proficiency guidelines of the American Council of Teaching of Foreign Languages, 6 Executive Boulevard, Upper Level, Yonkers, N.Y. 10701.