Russian Writers of the 19th Century in Russian Language Textbooks for Americans

This article considers Russian language textbooks created by American authors for American students in order to identify the attitude of their authors to the creativity of the Russian writers of the XIX century. The article reveals the reasons that prompted its author to use textbooks as research material, and gives their periodization in connection with the growing interest in learning Russian in the United States. The article examines more than 50 textbooks of Russian as a foreign language published in the USA in the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to our time; reveals the approach of the American creators of Russian textbooks to the choice of text material and the principles of its presentation in their textbooks. The method of continuous sampling is used to select the contexts containing information about the Russian literature of the XIX century. The author conducts quantitative and qualitative analyses of lexical units containing a cultural component of meaning connected with the Russian writers of the XIX century. One of the conclusions of the analyses is that Russian writers' proper names, names of literary works and genres of Russian literature are of the greatest frequency. Another conclusion is that the general frequency of lexical units associated with the Russian literature of the XIX century in American textbooks of the Russian language is small, which does not allow American students to create a clear impression of the Russian literature and Russian writers of the XIX century.

1. Bidwell Charles E. The Structure of Russian in Outline. 1969. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 124 p.
2. Boyer P., Speransky N. Russian Reader. Accented Texts, Grammatical and Explanatory Notes. 1915. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 386 p.
3. Boyer P., Speransky N. Russian Reader. Accented Texts, Grammatical and Explanatory Notes. 1932. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 381 p.
4. Cornyn W.S. Beginning Russian. Revised Edition. 1961. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 312 p.
5. Cruise E.J. English Grammar for Students of Russian. The Study Guide for Those Learning Russian. Second Edition. 1993. Michigan: The Olivia and Hill Press, 171 p. 
6. Davis P.A., Oprendek D.V. Making Progress in Russian. A second year course. 1973. Lexington (Massachusetts): Xerox College Publishing, 518 p.
7. Doherty J.C., Lamoureux C., Lander M.R. Russian: Book Two. 1970. Lexington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 382 p.
8. Doherty J.C., Markus Lander R. First Course in Russian. Part Two. 1961. Boston: D.C.Heath and Company, 245 p.
9. Domar R.A. Basic Russian. A Textbook for Beginners. 1961. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, INC., 516 p.
10. Fairbanks G.H., Leed R.L. Basic Conversational Russian. 1964. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 350 p.
11. Fastenberg R. Everybody’s Russian Reader. 1945. New York: Language Student Press, 129 p.
12. Franke Jack E. The Big Silver Book of Russian Verbs. 555 Fully Conjugated Verbs. 2005. New York: McGraw-Hill, 667 p.
13. Lunt Horace G. Fundamentals of Russian (First Russian Course). 1958. The Hague: Mount and Co. Publishers, 320 p.
14. Patrick G. One thousand commonly used Russian words With illustrative sentences 1935. New York: American Council Institute of Pacific relations, 107 p.
15. Prince J.D. Russian Grammar for Class and Reference Use. A Progressive Method of Learning Russian. 1919. New York: Columbia University, 218 p.
16. Robin R., Robin J., Henry K. Golosa: A Basic Course in Russian. 1993. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 347 p.
17. Robin R.M., Evans-Romaine K., Shatalina G. Golosa: A Basic Course in Russian. 5 th Edition. 2012. USA: Pearson, 426 p.
18. Sergievsky N.N. How to Read, Write and Speak Modern Russian. Second, Revised Edition. 1947. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 291 p.
19. Troika A. Communicative Approach to Russian Language, Life and Culture. 2nd Edition. 2011. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 676 p.