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Marina Tsylina is MA candidate at the Russian East European and Eurasian Studies Center at the University of Oregon. The activity was developed during her year teaching Russian heritage speakers at Portland State University.

This activity is related to the points brought up by Dr Mikhaylova in the Topic of the Week.

This activity aims at developing narrative oral and writing skills among heritage language learners. After completing this activity, students will solidify their abilities to narrate a story, using linking elements. This activity was used in a heritage language class, but it will also work for a mixed/foreign Russian language class. This activity simultaneously engages several skills: reading, listening and speaking.

Mode(s): Presentational Writing, Presentational Speaking, Interpretive Reading, Interpretive Listening

Objectives:

• Students will be able to understand and analyze the difference between two narratives: one with the means of cohesion, the other one without them.
• Students will become familiar with the means of cohesion and will be able to recognize them in the text.
• Students will be able to make up their own stories with the linking words, which will add evenness to their narratives.
• Students will be able to develop their writing and oral narrative skills.

Resources: Discourse Cohesion Activity Handout and Strip Story Handout in Russian.

*For an English example of a similar type of activity, see Cohesion in Writing Handout created by Renee Marshall, CASLS curriculum consultant.

Procedure:

1. Students are given two similar narratives; the only difference between them is the absence of linking phrases in one of them. Their task is to read the narratives and to understand that one of the versions is not very smooth and the other sounds better, as it contains linking words.
2. The next step is to introduce students to a range of linking words, which can be used in a narrative.
3. Then, students are asked to retell the story in their own way, using the means of text cohesion.
4. Next, students are asked to make up similar stories, on the basis of the texts they read, using the linking words.

Next time, to solidify students’ knowledge of linking words, they can be asked to fulfill the task of reassembling the parts of the story together.  The activity is called “Strip story.” The whole story is divided into ten or more (depending on the number of students) pieces. The students are not allowed to show their strips to each other. They are allowed to read them to each other and to place them in the right order to get a story. Cohesive devices are missing in the story so that they need to be supplied by students.