Russian-Speakers Taking Elementary Russian

[Martha Sherwood]

Faculty members who are seeing this problem for the first time might want
to consult with the people responsible for teaching Chinese at their
institution, since they have been dealing with it longer and may have
established policies.  Our East Asian languages department at the
University of Oregon has quite specific policies on the subject.  They have
a similar problem with determining whether an individual whose native
language of record is something else is also fluent in Chinese but is
trying to register for an elementary course to get easy credits or boost
his GPA.  Also, although their enrollments aren't historically as volatile
as in Russian, their advanced classes are quite small and they have reasons
(both pedagogical and financial) for wanting to encourage native speakers
to participate in the program at an appropriate level.

Martha Sherwood
Office Coordinator, Russian