LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Soviet secondary school textbook collection
One of the largest and most important collections of secondary school textbooks outside the former Soviet Union. A wide range of subjects for different age groups are covered. There are ‘spetskursy’ (intensive courses) as well as ordinary courses. Teaching materials used in many of the former republics of the Soviet Union are included, some in Ukrainian.

Designing textbooks for modern languages: the ELT experience
This article looks at the steps involved in writing coursebooks from the point of view of authors and publishers. It also looks at the advantages of team-authoring in the context of recent national textbook projects in Eastern Europe and former Soviet Union states. Whilst the main focus is upon the design of ELT materials, the approach described can usefully be applied to the design of language teaching materials in general.

History of linguistics
The history of linguistics is already being studied by a significant number of language and linguistics students, often unwittingly. Such students can enhance their understanding by calling on the full range of available materials. These include general overviews of the whole history of linguistics, as well as studies of particular periods, languages, subdisciplines, or geographical regions. Teaching will typically involve a lecture element, but is more likely to revolve around the study of texts, the choice of which depends on the background of the students. Internet resources are as yet sparse.

Linguistics in first year single honours courses
This document suggests ways of building up the first year of a single honours course in linguistics. It suggests that the year should consist of certain core courses introducing basic concepts relevant to the field, most importantly phonetics, grammar and semantics. In addition, there should be a set of optional courses on aspects of the field which interact with other subject areas (e.g. sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics). The document provides some ideas for text books to be used and also gives some other sources, in particular web-based facilities. The document also contains a brief discussion of assessment.