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OCR for page 37
Appendix 2
Defense Language Institute
Scientific Russian Course
The following information, provided by the Defense Language Insti-
tute, West Coast Branch, concerns the 10-week DLIWC Scientific
Russian Course.
The purpose of the course is to train students to read and trans-
late Russian technical and scientific texts in their gelds of interest
with the help of dictionaries and to speak and understand conver-
sational Russian to a limited degree.
The length of the course is 10 weeks; 5 days per week; 6 hr per
day.
For teaching purposes the classes are divided into sections of
usually not more than eight students.
The teaching materials used during the course consist of four
textbook volumes specially developed for this course and dealing
with essential Russian grammar, speech patterns, and exercises
in the translation of scientific texts. A special reference volume
is also provided. Recent Soviet publications on scientific topics in
the students' particular fields of interest are introduced in the form
of supplementary training materials.
The teaching materials for the Scientific Russian Course were
developed so as to ensure maximum effectiveness. After an initial
period, during which the essentials of the Russian language are
taught, the students switch over to teaching materials entirely
corresponding to their aims and specialities. The course is, there-
fore, flexible and can accommodate specialists in various fields of
scientific knowledge.
In conformity with the objectives outlined above, the main empha-
sis in the implementation of the course is laid on reading and on
translating from Russian into English.
The course involves the study of essential structural patterns
of the Russian language that are indispensable for the understanding
of scientific texts. Since Russian is a highly inflected language,
special stress is laid on the recognition of morphological change
37
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in words and its importance in grasping the exact meaning of
sentences.
This is especially important in texts involving mathematical
formulas and definitions where any distortion of meaning might
easily lead to entirely erroneous conclusions.
While speaking and aural-comprehension abilities are not
specially emphasized in the course, the students are taught to speak
and understand conversational Russian, though only to a limited
degree. Work in this particular field involves the use of tape re-
corders. At the end of the course the graduates have a vocabulary
of accroximatelv 750 words used in everyday exchanges.
. ~ ~
With respect to scientific terminology, the course features the
study of so- called "cognates"—internationally used terms derived
from the same root. The aim here is to teach the students to recog-
nize such words without the help of dictionaries and thus to facilitate
and speed up their work.
After completing the course, the graduates are able to read,
understand, and translate very complex texts in their fields of
interest.
The first scientific Russian course was implemented at this
Institute in 1961. In the past 4 years, this 10-week course was
attended by specialists in space mechanics, applied mathematics,
electrical engineering, chemistry, physics, and aeronautics.
In view of the important scientific and technological achieve-
ments that have been taking place in the Soviet Union in the last
few decades, it is hardly necessary to stress the utility of a course
that makes it possible for the specialists to learn in a comparatively
short time enough Russian to read contemporary Soviet scientific
literature in their fields of interest, and thus to keep abreast of
developments in that country.
38
Representative terms from entire chapter:
scientific russian
