UAF linguists publish volume on teaching Russian
Svetlana V. Nuss, left, and Wendy Whitehead Martelle edited and contributed to a recently published volume.
Wendy Whitehead Martelle, assistant professor of applied linguistics and ESL, and Svetlana V. Nuss, instructor of Russian, edited and contributed to a recently published volume with Routledge. “Task-Based Instruction for Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language,” is the first volume that Martelle or Nuss have edited and published.
The volume consists of 13 chapters, three of which were written by Martelle and Nuss. It focuses on Task-Based Language Teaching and applying TBLT for the teaching of Russian. Over the span of two years, Martelle and Nuss put out a call for submissions, emphasizing inclusiveness and transparency. The voices represented in the volume span from undergraduate teaching assistants to experienced professors coming from North and South America, Russia, England and other European countries.
Focusing on empirical and case studies, the volume explores how TBLT is a viable method for teaching Russian as a foreign language. TBLT places an emphasis on providing students with relevant tasks that benefit them in real-world activities.
Nuss and Martelle said it is unprecedented for Routledge to publish a volume like theirs, which includes Russian scholarship meeting that of the United States and elsewhere outside of Russia. One of their goals with this volume, they said, is to bridge that gap.
Their book was published on March 10, and is available on the Routledge site.
For more information, contact Wendy Martelle at wmmartelle@alaska.edu or Svetlana Nuss at svnuss@alaska.edu.