Advanced Russian: From Reading to Speaking is organized in six chapters. Each chapter contains one principal and one or more supplementary texts. The principal text is always prose: a short story or a selection of excerpts from several stories. Some supplementary texts are also short stories, and some are songs and poems. Several of our principal and supplementary texts have been slightly abridged from the original published versions, but the language in the retained portions has not been simplified or changed in any way.

The linguistic and cultural explanations for each transcript are linked to the relevant word or phrase in the text. They are displayed when the reader clicks the link. The explanations are of two varieties: language notes and background notes. All background notes are also presented as continuous text in a panel called Comments. The learner may view the Comments panel either before reading the principal text or afterwards for review.

All linguistic and many background notes are written in English, but the background notes that the student may want to discuss in class are in Russian.

All Russian words used in the notes may be looked up in the onscreen dictionary. To look up a word the learner may click it in the text of the note or type it in the Glossary window.

All chapters but one include a section called Interviews. Interviews are clips from video recordings that feature the authors of our principal or supplementary texts speaking about their life and work, as well as other matters. For example, in Interview 3-7 (Chapter 3, Interview 7), Sergei Dovlatov speaks about his experience as a Russian immigrant in America, a theme that is also treated in that chapter's principal and supplementary texts. Transcripts and linguistic and background notes are provided for all interviews, and their vocabulary is included in the dictionary.

Watching these unrehearsed interviews and reading the transcripts and notes offers the learner an opportunity to work with authentic, unscripted Russian speech, with its characteristic phonetic and syntactic peculiarities. The content of the interviews often adds a new dimension to the author's work and may be valuable for discussion in class and for writing assignments. The interviews vary in their length and linguistic difficulty. They are accompanied by assignments.

Each chapter in the course includes several video excerpts from feature films or documentaries that are thematically related to the chapter's principal or supplementary text. The connection is always explained in the video's title page. These excerpts vary in length from thirty seconds to over thirteen minutes. For example, when you open the Film subfolder inside the folder for Chapter 2, you see Film 2-2. From "Courier." 0:38. If you move the mouse pointer over this title, you'll see Из фќльма «Курьљр». «Актрќсой хотљла стђть?» in the description panel below the contents. "Film 2-2" tells you that this is a film excerpt 2 from Chapter 2. It is 38 seconds long. Both the principal and the supplementary texts in this chapter discuss the choice of a career, hence the choice of the scene from the film.

As the student watches the video, the transcript of the dialog is displayed in sync with the action. The student may pause the video and click any word in the transcript to look it up in the dictionary or to read a linked language or background note.

Scenes from popular Russian films of various periods in the last quarter of the XX century—including post-Soviet productions—offer rich material on everyday culture of the time—the sort of information that cannot be made accessible to the learner in any other way. In the Film sections, art, reality, and technology are combined to create a unique learning environment. The learner is exposed to images, ideas, sounds, speech patterns, body language, and numerous other aspects of everyday life that are important for his or her linguistic and cultural education.

All film episodes are accompanied by vocabulary and communicative assignments (usually one or two but sometimes as many as six).

All chapters but one contain a Songs or Poems section. The video and audio recordings in these sections support the principal or supplementary text in the chapter or elsewhere in the course. For example, in the Songs subfolder inside the folder for Chapter 1 you will see the video clip Song 1-2A. Yuri Vizbor. 1:49 and also the audio clip Song 1-2B. Yuri Vizbor. 2:24. The descriptions that are displayed below the contents as you move the mouse pointer over these titles will tell you that this is the same song recorded twice: by an amateur performer (2A) and by the songwriter himself (2B). The recordings are 1 minute 49 seconds and 2 minutes 24 seconds long, respectively. The story in the song echoes the events in the chapter's supplementary text.

In addition to some linguistic notes for difficult items in the lyrics and poems (whose vocabulary is included in the dictionary), all of these texts are accompanied by translations in prose. These were written to explain the language and meaning of the original without any attempt to recreate the rhythm or rhyme of the original.

The songs and poems should be helpful in promoting the learner's understanding of the related stories in the course as well as his or her familiarity with the Russian culture: all these items are well known to almost any educated person in Russia. No assignments for the songs and poems are included, but teachers and students may use them in a variety of ways, e.g. for memorization, performing in class or at a concert, or writing rhymed and metered translations.

All chapters but one have sections that feature photographs related to the chapter's principal or supplementary text. For example, from the Portraits subfolder in the folder for Chapter 6 you can open a pastel portrait of Anna Akhmatova and a photograph of Marina Tsvetaeva. Recordings of poems by Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva_400x576 are included in the chapter's Poems folder; these poems are quoted in the chapter's principal text, Ludmila Ulitskaya's short story "A Natural Phenomenon." Other portraits also show the authors or songwriters featured in the chapter.

Each photograph is accompanied by at least one assignment that usually asks the learner to describe the picture or to work with the subject's biography. Where suitable, specific vocabulary is offered.

As mentioned throughout this section of the Introduction, all items in this course except poems and songs are accompanied by assignments that are designed to improve the learner's speech habits and vocabulary or communicative skills. The nature of most assignments is fairly open-ended: there is no right or wrong way to carry them out. They often call for creative initiative on the part of the student. Many of them offer the learner an opportunity to draw on his or her personal experience, to describe his or her opinions and attitudes, to prepare a presentation, or engage in a dialog. Some assignments suggest work with Russian-language Web sites.

The purpose of this section is to suggest a strategy and specific techniques for reading complex Russian texts that may be difficult because of their cultural allusions or complicated syntax. The section offers exercises for practicing these techniques. The text used in this section is "Nika" («Ника»), a short story by Viktor Pelevin. The story has not been altered from the original publication except to add primary and secondary stress marks for all accented vowels. Its vocabulary is covered by the onscreen dictionary, but only some of the potentially useful linguistic and background comments are provided; suggestions are made for finding the rest of this information elsewhere. This section may be thought of as a bridge from the assisted language work in this course to independent reading.

Guided Reading is not directly coordinated with any of the chapters. It is assumed that the teachers and learners who use Advanced Russian will decide when to engage in the fairly challenging activities of Guided Reading.