| This dissertation explores the presentation of grammar in five elementary Russian language textbooks: Гoлoca, Haчaлo, Tpoйкa, Russian Stage One, and A New Russian Course. The first four chapters explore how the books present four fundamental topics of Russian grammar the alphabet, the sound system, declension, and conjugation. The fifth chapter explores the history and pedagogical usefulness of the one-stem verb system, which was originally suggested by Roman Jakobson.; The dissertation examines both specific explanations of individual grammatical points as well as the general approach within which these explanations are given. Further, it analyses the implications that certain choices in presenting one area of the grammar have on other parts of the grammar. For example, it shows how the manner in which the palatalization is presented directly influences the presentation of both declension and conjugation.; Though much of the dissertation, admittedly, is a defense of the author's own textbook, it constantly attempts to justify in the most concrete terms possible why a particular explanation or approach found in A New Russian Course is preferable. This is particularly true in the final chapter, where it is not so much a question of the accuracy of the presentations of the one-stem system in other works, (as opposed to much of the analysis in the first four chapters, where quite often we find that a book has simply not presented an accurate picture of the grammar), as it is a question of the pedagogical value of a particular approach to conjugation. |
