3rd and 4th years

Tue Jun 6 00:43:53 UTC 1995

Dear SEELANGERS,
For Lorraine Busch and others who may have been waiting for a summary
on combining 3rd and 4th years, I hope that this topic will be explored
more thoroughly in the future.
Inspired by a posting from Harold Baker, I requested feedback on the idea
of combining 3rd- and 4th-year classes.  There were three respondents, one of
whom is doing exactly what I described.  I wrote to Steve Baehr for
more info, and include his second message to me.  His first was
broadcast, but I include it here for completeness.
At Southern Illinois University (Carbondale), our 3rd- and 4th-year courses
have only 2nd year as prerequisites, and students wind up taking whatever's
offered, the order being imposed only by what is available when.
I suspect this is true elsewhere, but not institutionalized as such.
Also, all our courses beyond 2nd year are one semester long.
We have new students each semester, and a year-long course seems impractical.
What now follows are the responses I got.  They are brief and not
repetitive, so I'm not summarizing or otherwise editing (much).
Sarah Heyer    ga4224 at siucvmb.siu.edu
.....
Date:         Thu, 13 Apr 95 00:35:30 EDT
From:         SLBAEHR at VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU
Subject:      3rd/4th year
To:           ga4224 at siucvmb.siu.edu

 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 who has had and who needs a specific
course, but that rotation will 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.

 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
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 95 13:08:56 EST
From: meredigj at GVSU.EDU (JOHN MEREDIG)
Message-Id: <9503127977.AA797717336 at GVSU.EDU>
To: ga4224 at siucvmb.siu.edu
Subject: Russian 3/4

          Sarah,
          Your idea sounds very reasonable. When I student-taught
          German at the high school level a few years back, the
          teacher was faced with the same circumstance, so she came up
          with two separate one-year sequences that she alternated in
          her combined third and fourth year class.  Essentially the
          grammar topics were repeated each year, but the materials
          used (readings, etc.) were different.
             Certainly all third-year students will have completed
          their first sweep through the basic grammar of the entire
          langauge (I've taught beginning Russian at 4 different
          universities - I'm an itinerant ABD - and all of them
          "finished the textbook" in 1-2 years), and the more in-depth
          treatment of various topics in third year can certainly
          stand to be repeated in fourth year (I find that it is
          impossible to spend too much time and effort on verbs of
          motion, apsect, etc., and German has similar topics as well
          that seem to require going over a half a dozen times before
          they really start to sink in).
             As for the possibility of the fourth-year students being
          too far ahead of the third-year students, I find that it is
          more a function of the individual students themselves: the
          really good third-year students may well be ahead of the
          weaker fourth-year students.
             I think you're taking the right approach. Good luck!

          Sincerely,
          John Meredig

---------
^^^^^^^^^
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 1995 09:19:24 -0700
To: ga4224 at siucvmb.siu.edu
From: hdbaker at uci.edu (Harold D. Baker)
Subject: Re: 3/4 Russian class

I'm the one who posted about that class and I'd be glad to talk about the
specific problems it involves. The bottom line is that this is a feasible
combination, and I think preferable to working with very small groups
separately (as in your case, of 2-4 students). What you plan to do (a
two-year sequence of "themes") sounds very exciting. I do, however, try to
continue giving them grammar concepts. They are far from confident in this
area and usually insist on it.

Harold D. Baker
Program in Russian
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92717 USA
1-714-824-6183/Fax 1-714-824-2379

Date:         Tue, 18 Apr 95 14:09:36 EDT
From:         Steve Baehr <SLBAEHR at VTVM1.CC.VT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: 3rd and 4th year
To:           GA4224 at SIUCVMB.SIU.EDU
In-Reply-To:  Your message of Fri, 14 Apr 95 22:39:34 CST

The Rus Press used Frank Miller's book this past semester, as you
guessed; it was supplemented with readings from Izvestiia
and occasionaly from Nezavisimaia gazeta. In addition,
students needed to do outside assignments on a topic of their
choice, using the Russian newspapers available in the library.
Students with 2 year were required to read 40 column inches over
the semester; those with three years were required to read
70 column inches.

 Yes, we used Simes for Political Russian.

For Advanced Grammar, we use Townsend and cover all ten review lesssons
and 5 or 6 of the actual lessons in one semester. (After a lot of work
in building the program, we have some very good students.) I highly
recommend that you NOT use Davis --it's dry, dull, and dated.

Oral Proficiency used Russian Stage III. I have not taught the course,
but it looks decent (though far from exciting). We'd like to change
but I still haven't found anything better. Since I've never taught
the course, I can't say how it differs from a conversation course.
(One difference is in practice: we grade all Oral Proficiency courses
here P/F only; to achieve a pass a student must achieve Intermediate
High on ACTFL after 1 semester and Advanced after 2. (We still have
not offered the second semester, and about 1/2 students achieved
Advanced anyway.)

I have not used Focus on Russian, but a native whom we brought over
from Ulianovsk last year under an exchange agreement did use it.
Students were mixed.

Finally, I teach all advanced literature courses entirely in Russian.
During the first half of the semester, I have students translate any
difficult constructions that I use; after that, it's sink or swim
(although I try to put new words on the board and will always
accept questions on the meaning of what I said). All readings are
in Russian, and we do very close readings of the texts. As a result,
we go far more slowly than a grad lit class (about 10 Chekhov stories
over this semester, for example). But the students get a good idea
as to how to analyze literature carefully, and they are required to
do pereskazy on every story (both oral and written).
I would say that the course ends up as 65% lit and 35% lang, but maybe
50/50. One way or the other, students are improving their Russian
while learning lit.

Good luck in developing your program.

                 Steve Baehr