Elena Mikhailovna Stepanova (1930–2007)

Back in the 70s and early 80s, this was the textbook many schools used to teach Russian. The textbook came with a book of exercises, a book of grammatical explanations, a book for conversation, a book of readings, a vocabulary book and small records printed on very thin yellow cellophane-like plastic squares which contained pronunciation and oral exercises and the cost was incredibly cheap for the whole thing and it came straight from the Soviet Union. Back when I transferred to UCLA in 1979, I bought the whole complex, even though I was not in the 1st year Russian class. (I had taken my first two years of Russian at UCRiverside and we used an atrocious textbook called: Reading Modern Russian.) I no longer have all the books that came with "Russian for All", but I do have the textbook. It is one of the first non-grammar based approaches to learning a foreign language in that the book has no English (except in the glossary, but only from Russian to English, French, Spanish and German), there are no grammar explanations, and you are supposed to learn by example. I suppose if you use all of the supplementary materials, a person might be able to teach themselves the language, but the textbook itself really assumes that a teacher will be guiding the students through all the fill-in exercises, finishing of sentences and reading. Unless the student is very good at intuiting the pattern based on the replicas and has a flawless memory -- they will need a good teacher to get them past the point of simple memorization.

On the other hand, what I did really like about the book, despite it's very Soviet and dated material, is that it captured a kind of innocent hopefulness about people, language and life in the USSR in the way the "story" is presented. Yes, there is a story. Each chapter (which are fairly short) begins with a few sentences which demonstrate the grammar about to be learned. Within these sentences, the student becomes acquainted with various families that all live in the same building. Each chapter then presents exercises that repeat the vocabulary and grammar by having the student substitute a word or set of words within the example sentence. This is followed by a "conversational" section, in which very short conversations are given, followed by exercises that mimic the conversations, and finally there is a reading. The reading puts these people in the context of the apartment building where they all live. As the chapters progress, the student learns more and more about the lives of the various people and how they interact. Granted the lives of these people are not very complex (this is a 'beginning' textbook), but nevertheless it holds your interest in learning and reading more. The drawings are also delightful. They are very simple, but fairly clear on what meaning they are trying to convey. Each chapter ends with a drawing and a humorous comment. Every few chapters there is a "review" chapter in which the student is told what they have learned: You know the months of the year (followed by all the months), the genitive case (a chart with the endings), About yourself you can say: last name, date of birth, education, ...

As I read through this textbook, I felt that, although I don't think this is an excellent textbook and it would not work for most students' today, I would have benefited greatly if this had been my first textbook, rather than the dismal and inept textbook I actually had when I was a student.… (mais)