Scientific Russian

Scientific Russian: Readings in Russian Science and Technologyis designed for those students who wish to learn to read a wide variety of scientific literature in the original Russian.

The importance of Russian as a medium of scientific and technological interchange became apparent in the 1950s. The Soviet Union had built itself a reputation as a secretive scientific powerhouse, capable of overtaking the West in fields ranging from rocketry to geology. Yet even before the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Russian reputation for science wizardry had begun to fade. However, it would be a mistake to underestimate the significant role Russian science and technology continues to play in the world. In a number of fields Russia continues to command center stage in science and technology.

In space, the Russians have been the only country to produce an affordable working space station. Russian satellite photography, now available commercially, is conceded to be some of the best available.

In medicine, Russian physician Sergei Fedorov pioneered the surgical cure for near-sightedness.

The disastrous state of the ecology of the former Soviet Union has led to a boom in research into waste management and clean-up.

Of course, Russia's biggest single ecological flashfire, the Chernobyl explosion, has produced scientific research so massive in so many interdisciplinary fields that those without a knowledge of Russian could not even begin to study the question seriously with reference to Russian sources.

This book approaches reading from two opposite standpoints: that of the researcher looking at a large corpus of material for specific information and that of the reader looking for the details presented in a limited set of data.

The large-scale researcher working with hundreds of articles might skim and scan through thousands of pages looking for a few specifics about a particular scientific procedure. Here the development of reading strategies plays a crucial role in allowing readers to get the gist and salient facts of a given set of articles quickly.

In other cases, a closer reading is required. Exact translations or detailed summaries require that the reader have a thorough grasp of each part of an article.

The skills required for skimming and scanning differ for those used in close reading. Skimming and scanning relies on the recognition of key words, the use of context to carrying readers around unknown words efficiently, and a familiarity with text markers that signal changes in topic, the onset of unneeded details, the statement of opinions and hypotheses as opposed to fact, and so on. Close reading, on the other hand, requires an intimate knowledge of the language's syntax as expressed in the grammatical relationships among the words in a sentence, as well as the exact meanings of the words themselves.

Each chapter of Scientific Russianis based on a series of pre-text and post-text exercises which surround two articles, one short and one longer.

PRE-TEXT ASSIGNMENTS

1. Background information. As readers, we rarely approach a text "blind." Meaningful interpretation comes only when we bring to bear the background necessary to make assumptions about what the author may be saying. This section provides a skeleton introduction to each topic in English.
   
   The following exercises prepare the reader for the second text, which is longer.
   
   
2. Text I. This short text introduces the topic. This text serves both as additional background information as well as a preview to the vocabulary, syntax, and style in the upcoming more difficult text.
   
   
3. Vocabulary development. This consists of a number of exercises which present the vocabulary to be found in Text II.
   
   
4. General preparatory questions for Text II. These questions point the reader to the general information one can expect to find in the article to follow.
   
   
5. Text II. This article is significantly longer than Text I.

POST-TEST ASSIGNMENTS

1. Close reading. Work with grammar; this consists of a number of exercises.
   
   
2. Questions on specific details of the article.
   
   
3. Exercises on paragraph structure and syntax. Students learn to follow the thematic and rhetorical structure of a text, in addition to its grammatical structure. This skill allows readers to zero in on those parts of a text that are most likely to present the most interest.