Adaptive Course
of Russian as a Foreign Language

Author: Marina Prilepskaya,

PhD, associate
professor, Department of French language

For MEB listeners this course is provided free of charge during the first semester of their stay in Moscow.

Target Audience: foreign students pursuing their studies in the International Institute of Administration and Business, having at least elementary knowledge of Russian.

The course is adaptive, thus flexible, adjusted to the initial level of the listeners and tailored to their needs (grammar and cultural and regional topics chosen in concert with the listeners). Thisapproachhelpstotakeintoaccountcertainfactors:

  • Limits of stay in Higher School of Economics (several weeks/modules/semester)
  • Specific requirements related to the chosen programme of studies (understanding the lectures, performing literature reviews, preparing essays, passing exams) so as to maximize learning outcomes for courses taught in Russian;
  • Diversity of courses and their content.

The programme is ideally designed for English- and French-speaking audience. The course uses methods of interlingual analysis (comparative grammar and lexicology). Attention is given to the language used in the media as a means to improve verbal communication and writing skills for different situations: giving a presentation, preparing an overview, lexical and stylistic analysis of the printed media.

Some tasks are oriented towards the National Corps of Russian language ( and web-sites of some Russian media-companies.

Distance support during the course is performed through electronic means of communication, including e-mailing and using electronic resources of National Research University Higher School of Economics.

Course length in hours is time and needs adjusted.

A typical course would include the following topics:

  • Peculiarities of spoken and written Russian compared to English and French
  • Russian Grammar Peculiarities compared to French
  • Functional equivalents of the verbs “to be” and “to have” (’etre’ and ‘avoir’) in Russian
  • Russianpunctuationpeculiarities
  • Russia – thecountry of Russian
  • ThemediainmodernRussia
  • Different genres in social and political journalism
  • Economics and Business. Business contacts with Russia
  • Seats of militaryconflicts
  • Politicalimage and elections
  • Relations between the media and the authorities