New Features

• An enhanced integration of the popular and highly praised Nachalo video with the print materials, providing a more robust cultural experience for language learners. Each lesson in the textbook begins with a photo still taken from the video with and a summary of the four parts of the text, including a description of the scenes recorded on video.
  • A colorful and engaging new CD-ROM, which contains the video segments as well as functional activities targeted to the linguistic and cultural information contained in each lesson.
  • A new text-specific Website, containing resources for both students and instructors. Students can access the Online Learning Center for additional activities and resources linked to the chapter themes, while instructors will be able to connect to the Bulletin Board to share messages about the text from instructors around the country. Students and teachers at adopting schools can download the readings, a searchable glossary, and a searchable grammar index.
  • A new and substantially expanded listening comprehension program accompanies the Second Edition and is available in either audio CD or cassette format.
  • A completely new Workbook/Lab Manual offers an increased emphasis on contextualized and open-ended activities, both in the Workbook and in the Laboratory audio program.
  • Nachalo is now the only 4-COLOR Russian text on the market. All photos are four-color, further enhancing the learning experience.
  • The O Rossii ("About Russia") cultural boxes have been revised and enhanced to reflect recent developments and current issues in Russia.
  • The Second Edition offers extensively revised grammar explanations and exercises based on extensive user feedback, including a more consolidated and comprehensive presentation of case forms. Much of the first edition grammar was resequenced to address reviewers' concerns over fragmented presentation of morphological forms.
  • Fewer lessons in each Volume. Now, each volume consists of seven (7) lessons. The final lesson of first edition Book 1 now begins Book 2, so complex genitive plural endings no longer come at the end of the first volume. Book 2 ends with an epilogue that is entirely on video and can be done by students independently.
• Each part is now marked with a colored tab for ease of reference.
• Each lesson now ends with tinted pages containing an active vocabulary list, a grammar checklist, a grammar consolidation, and a new optional supplemental text:
  • The active vocabulary is a list of all vocabulary presented in a given chapter.
  • Grammar consolidation: The tinted pages for each lesson contain a grammar consolidation which focuses on forms or usage to date.
  • Grammar checklist: The tinted pages for each lesson contain a checklist for students to review the major grammar topics of the lesson.
  • Optional supplemental texts: schedules for performing arts or sporting events, maps, diagrams, tongue twisters, short magazine articles and reviews, poems, songs, cartoons, advertisements, etc.
• The Art of Conversation (along with "Reading" and "Grammar and Practice") is now a major section in each part. It includes several repeating rubrics from the first edition as well as several new repeating rubrics, all of which focus on development of speaking skills.
• New thematic, visual openers begin each Part with a short visual display related to a theme of that part (e.g., health, shopping, travel, work). This feature reinforces vocabulary acquisition through lexical/visual association and addresses the needs of visual learners. In addition, it focuses on the traditional "themes" (food/restaurant, body/health, sports/leisure, etc.) that many teachers want in textbooks.
• New reading exercises in each part are followed by an exercise (Pod mikroskopom = "Under the Microscope") that focuses on a grammatical or lexical feature from an earlier lesson or as a "set-up" for the current lesson.
• New "reVERBerations": Sidebars provide a review of specific grammar issues
• Expanded teacher annotations have been augmented with additional teaching suggestions and language notes that will be especially useful for teachers who are non-native speakers.

Proven Features

• Nachalo is a two-volume text, designed to correspond to the typical grammar syllabus covered in the first two years of beginning Russian. In Nachalo, grammar is treated functionally and grows directly from the story line.
• The text always presents grammar in context, focusing on how grammar is used and what it does, rather than on learning grammar for grammar's sake. In addition, Nachalo does an unusually good job of spiraling the grammar throughout the text to ensure that students retain what they have already learned.
• The enjoyable story line in Nachalo involves the lives of an American student, Jim, who is studying in Russia, and his Russian friends. The story is presented in the form of dialogues or readings in each chapter, and exposes students to an abundance of authentic language in a cultural setting that is unmatched in other Russian textbooks. In addition, the story line provides interesting characters and topics that students will want to talk about in class.
• The Video to accompany Nachalo, shot on location in Moscow with professional Russian actors, is unique to beginning Russian books. At least one episode per chapter of the story line is on the video, giving students the opportunity to see and hear a significant portion of the story line. In addition, short of taking them there, video offers students the best way to see and to get a vivid sense of what Russia is like today. The Video Guide for instructors and students offers a wealth of suggestions for implementation in the classroom.
• The practice material in Nachalo ranges from mechanical to interactive. The exercises, which progress from controlled and focused to communicative and open-ended, allow students to practice Russian grammar in such traditional formats as fill-in-the-blanks, completions, and translations, as well as in more communicative settings like small group and partner-pair work.
• This text has the most complete support package of any beginning Russian text currently available, including: the new text-specific Website and Student CD-ROM, an Annotated Teacher's Edition, a combined Instructor's Manual and Test Bank, Student Audiocassette Tapes or CDs, a complete Language Lab Audio Cassette or CD Program, the text-specific Video, and more.