"AN AUTOMATED SYSTEM FOR DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIAN-LANGUAGE PEDAGOGICAL MATERIALS"

A PROPOSAL IS MADE TO INVESTIGATE THE FEASIBILITY OF AN AUTOMATED MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM (AMDS) FOR IMPROVED TEACHING OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE. THE AMDS IS INTENDED TO PRODUCT CLASSROOM MATERIALS MORE DIRECTLY FROM SELECTED RUSSIAN SOURCE-LANGUAGE MATERIALS. THE PROPOSED INVESTIGATION INCLUDES IDENTIFICATION AND EVALUATION OF RELEVANT DATA AND SOFTWARE RESOURCES, AS WELL AS DOCUMENTATION OF THE FUNCTIONALITY AND SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE OF THE AMDS, USING HIPO DIAGRAMS AND FACSIMILE OUTPUT ANALYSES. SOURCES OF MACHINE-READABLE CYRILLIC TEXTS AND PUBLIC-DOMAIN LANGUAGE-PROCESSING SOFTWARE ARE ESPECIALLY TO BE SOUGHT. THE OUTPUT PRODUCED BY THE AMDS WILL BE BASED ON TEXT-PROCESSING AND NATURAL LANGUAGE ANALYSES WHICH WILL PROVIDE INSIGHT INTO THE LEXICAL, MORPHOLOGICAL, SYNTACTIC AND SEMANTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF RUSSIAN SOURCE TEXTS, SO TEACHERS OF RUSSIAN CAN RELATE CLASSROOM MATERIALS MORE DIRECTLY TO SPECIFIC PEDAGOGICAL GOALS AND TO SELECTED CONTENT AREAS IN AN AREA STUDIES OR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES CURRICULUM. A MICROCOMPUTER-BASED PROTOTYPE AMDS WILL BE DEVELOPED AND DEMONSTRATED IN PHASE I. IN PHASE II, THE FULL AMDS WILL BE IMPLEMENTED, AND MADE AVAILABLE FOR NATIONAL DISTRIBUTION. THE AMDS BUILT IN PHASE II WILL ALSO BE THE MAJOR SOFTWARE RESOURCE USED TO DEVELOP AN AUTOMATED RUSSIANVERB DICTIONARY, BASED ON TESNIERE'S VALENCE GRAMMAR THEORY, WHICH HAS PROVEN ESPECIALLY EFFECTIVE IN EUROPE FOR TEACHING RUSSIAN AND OTHER SYNTACTICALLY COMPLEX LANGUAGES.