Modern Russian textbooks for schools in Czech Republic: advantages and disadvantages

Abstract

The article analyses the current state of the Russian language teaching materials in the Czech secondary and high school. The Russian language is taught at Czech schools as the second and third foreign language. This naturally influences aims, contents and methodological concept of study packs used in the foreign language teaching. The authors point out the requirements for modern Russian language school textbooks, fundamental criteria for assessing them, the particularities of learning Russian in a closely-related language environment. Among the so-called coursebooks of a “new type” the authors determine electronic and interactive versions of textbooks which started to appear in classrooms recently. However, not all of them meet modern requirements. The article analyses the study packs used in Czech Republic in order to reveal their advantages and disadvantages. The conclusions are proved by the results of the survey carried out among Russian language teachers at Czech schools.