3rd/4th years

[Stephen Baehr]

 We have been combining third and fourth year Russian at Virginia
Tech for about 3 years now and have had excellent success. We
have a rotation that depends on what students need,
and that rotation can be as much as 8 semesters. We
work all courses above second year on a one-semester basis.
Courses include: Russian Television, Russian Press, Major authors (this
year Chekhov), Oral Proficiency, Advanced Grammar, Political Russian.
The literature courses and, of course, the oral proficiency course are
taught in Russian and there is a strong oral component in most other courses.

 My only observation is that students who have had only 2 years are
at a disadvantage for the first half of their 1st semester of third year, but
most are able to do a "pullup" by the end of that semester. I have
done grade analyses for the last 3 years and noted that there is NOT
a correlation, surprisingly enough, between grade and number of years--
even in the first semester courses.

          Steve Baehr
          Professor of Russian
          Virginia Tech
          slbaehr at vtvm1.cc.vt.edu