Newspaper articles of general interest serve as the basis for numerous exercises intended to help the student gain an active knowledge of the vocabulary and phraseology characteristic of written and spoken Russian and essential for reading and communicating in Russian at an advanced level. Special attention is devoted to word formation and the use of new vocabulary and phraseologies in their typical contexts. A review vocabulary list at the end of each lesson indicates words the student is expected to master in each lesson, and a cumulative vocabulary list at the end of the text shows where each item occurs.