NYSTCE Russian flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Interpretive mode

The ACTFL communication mode in which learners understand, interpret, and analyze what they hear, read, or view, without interacting with the author or speaker.

Interpersonal mode

Two-way, spontaneous communication in which participants negotiate meaning in real time, such as a conversation or text exchange with a Russian speaker.

Presentational mode

One-way communication in which learners create spoken or written messages for an audience, such as a report, letter, or oral presentation in Russian.

Aspect pair

A verb pair with the same lexical meaning but different aspect, like делать and сделать, where the perfective typically adds completion or a single bounded action.

Soft sign (ь)

A Cyrillic letter with no sound of its own that palatalizes a preceding consonant or marks grammatical categories such as feminine nouns and infinitives.

Theme and rheme

The information structure of a clause: theme is given context and rheme is new or focused information, which in Russian tends to come last.

ты versus вы

Russian second-person pronouns distinguishing informal singular address (ты) from formal or plural address (вы), with misuse constituting a pragmatic error.

Silver Age

A period of Russian cultural flourishing from roughly the 1890s to the 1920s, associated with symbolism and modernist poetry, including Blok and Akhmatova.

Pushkin's Eugene Onegin

A verse novel by Alexander Pushkin, written 1823 to 1831, considered foundational to modern Russian literary language and a model of the Onegin stanza.

Zero copula

The absence of a present-tense form of 'to be' in Russian, as in Он студент, while past and future use был and будет.

East Slavic branch

The branch of Indo-European containing Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian, which share Cyrillic writing and considerable historical and lexical overlap.

Three P's of culture

A framework teaching culture as products, practices, and perspectives, linking artifacts and behaviors to the beliefs and values that underlie them.

Formative assessment

Ongoing, low-stakes assessment used to monitor learning and give feedback, such as exit tickets or ungraded speaking checks in Russian class.

Summative assessment

Assessment of learning at the end of a unit or course, used to assign grades and judge whether learning objectives were met.

Comprehensible input

Language input slightly beyond the learner's current level, often expressed as i+1, which supports acquisition when meaning is clear from context.

Performance vs. proficiency

Performance is rehearsed demonstration of learned material, while proficiency is spontaneous use in unrehearsed, real-world contexts.

ACTFL proficiency levels

A scale from Novice through Intermediate, Advanced, Superior, and Distinguished, describing what learners can do with language in unrehearsed communication.

Authentic materials

Texts, audio, and video produced for native speakers rather than learners, such as Russian news, menus, and songs, adapted through tasks rather than simplification.

Selective error correction

A strategy of correcting errors that impede meaning or target the lesson focus, while leaving minor errors uncorrected during fluency activities.

CEFR A1 to C2

A six-level European framework describing language proficiency from beginner (A1) to mastery (C2), frequently used to align Russian curricula and tests.

Genitive case functions

A case marking possession, absence after нет, quantity after много and мало, partitive meaning, and dates such as первое января.

Prepositional case with в and на

Used for location, as in в Москве or на столе, while the same prepositions with the accusative express direction or motion toward.

Unidirectional versus multidirectional verbs

Motion verb pairs such as идти and ходить, where unidirectional verbs describe one directed journey and multidirectional verbs describe repeated or general motion.

Instrumental of profession

The instrumental case used after быть and стать to name a profession, as in Он стал врачом, meaning 'He became a doctor'.

Numerals and genitive

Two, three, and four take genitive singular (два стола), while five and above take genitive plural (пять столов) in Russian.

Conditional with бы

A construction formed with the particle бы plus a past-tense verb, as in Я бы пошёл, expressing hypothetical or conditional meaning.

Reflexive suffix -ся

A verbal suffix marking reflexive, reciprocal, or impersonal meaning, as in мыться 'to wash oneself' or Мне не спится 'I can't sleep'.

Vowel reduction (akanie)

The pronunciation change in unstressed syllables where о becomes [a]-like, as in Москва, and е or я reduce toward [i].

Final devoicing

The rule that voiced consonants become voiceless at the end of a word, so друг is pronounced with a final [k].

Hard sign (ъ)

A letter that appears only after prefixes before е, ё, ю, or я, as in объявление, separating the prefix from a palatalized vowel onset.

Always-hard consonants

The consonants ж, ш, and ц, which are hard in native Russian words and explain spelling rules such as writing и after ж and ш.

Mobile stress

The property of Russian stress that it is unpredictable from spelling and can shift between forms or change meaning, as in за́мок versus замо́к.