NATIVE SPEAKERS IN RUSSIAN CLASSES

[Gary H. Toops]

I've been following with interest the discussion of Russian-speaking
students (from Moldova, Ukraine, etc.) in college-level Russian-
language classes.  I teach Russian in a foreign-language (largely
Spanish) department.  The policies already in place for the enrollment
of native speakers of Spanish in Spanish classes have thankfully spared
me the problem of dealing with native speakers of Russian in my classes.
According to these policies, a native speaker is not only someone who
speaks the language in question at home with his/her family, but also
someone who has previously received a substantial portion of his/her
(primary and/or secondary) education in that language.  Native speakers
thus defined are barred from enrolling in any "lower-division" (100-
and 200-level) courses in their native language.

A few years ago in my 3rd-semester Russian class I had an Armenian stu-
dent who had attended and graduated from a Russian high school in
Baku, Azerbaijan.  Even though he insisted that his native language was
Armenian and that he spoke Armenian at home (which was confirmed by
a faculty member of Armenian descent), I was able to make that student
drop my Russian course by pointing out that his entire pre-college edu-
cation had been in Russian.

It was nevertheless interesting to note that that student had *not* been
"acing" the course:  he may have had a native command of Russian, but
his knowledge of English was nowhere near the same level, and so in
translation exercises (both English-Russian and Russian-English) he
regularly made mistakes that my other, American students did not.
Although his Russian translations were perfect from the standpoint of
grammaticality, they often deviated in meaning from the original English
sentences, which this student had apparently not fully understood.

I, too, have encountered students who need to "carry" a certain number
of credit hours each semester in order to continue qualifying for
financial aid.  At Wichita State this usually results in students
enrolling in classes they never attend; the financial-aid policy re-
quires only that they *enroll* in a certain number of classes, not that
they pass them all.  Consequently, many students willingly ignore and
fail courses for which they've enrolled as part of the price of securing
financial aid.


Gary H. Toops                               TOOPS at TWSUVM.UC.TWSU.EDU
Associate Professor                         Ph (316) 689-3180
Wichita State University                    Fx (316) 689-3293
Wichita, Kansas 67260-0011 USA              http://www.twsu.edu/~mcllwww