More on at-risk students

[Sibelan Forrester]

A few other thoughts about those at-risk students:

We believe or tell our colleagues that Russian is harder to learn than
Romance or Germanic languages -- perhaps then it behooves us to devote our
attention to helping students who have a hard time.  In particular, in my
experience at least, students who are just dyslexic enough to have their
buttons pushed by "backwards R's" and the like.  Often all it takes is
pointing out that Student Support Services or whoever might be able to help
them.
I bet we all have had students who didn't seem all that promising at first
but went on to surprise us -- perhaps their first extended stay in Russia
got them over their difficulties, or perhaps they went on to do great
things in other fields with their not-very-impressive language skills.  A
student who sticks it out despite getting C's (or B's, at some places) is
at least motivated by sincere interest rather than a hunger for that easy
grade.
One nice strategy is to have more advanced students of Russian (on a list
provided by the relevant professors) available to tutor beginning students.
This tutoring can be paid for (as at Oberlin College, for example) by the
same Student Support budget that pays for Calculus or Econ tutors, this not
draining the resources of the Russian profs or dept.  The older students
get to repeat their basics, the beginners get help; pointing out that
asking for a tutor is helping another student make some money often makes
the idea of getting a tutor more appealing for the student who feels a
little funny about it.
And finally:  I have wound up having great relationships with some of the
students who flunked out of my language courses.  Maybe precisely because
the grand act of flunking out switched the nature of the conversation from
grades and transmission of knowledge to other issues?

Respectfully,

Sibelan Forrester

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+  Sibelan Forrester                                               +
+  Modern Languages                                                 +
+  Swarthmore College                                             +
+  500 College Ave.                                                    +
+  Swarthmore, PA  19081-1397                                  +
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+  (610) 328-8162                                                        +
+  fax  (610) 328-7769                                                 +
+  SFORRES1 at swarthmore.edu                                         +
+  http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/sforres1      +
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