tactics for reducing attrition

[Benjamin Rifkin]

Emily Tall asked what tactics we used at UW-Madison to reduce attrition.
In a nutshell, we ...

*slowed down the grammatical syllabus to give students more time to master
the structures we were teaching;

*we gave students more opportunities to learn about Russian culture in and
out of class, including the viewing of Russian films and videos (such as
Slava Paperno's films or the Kontakt series from SUNY-Albany);

*increased student input for the selection of course content wherever
possible, increasing the students' sense of "ownership" of the material;

*kept careful tabs on all students to monitor how they were doing in the
class, assisting them as needed BEFORE problems occured; and

*made increased efforts to provide students with positive reinforcement so
that they would feel good about studying Russian.

Currently, I am working on ways to increase the contact among students of
different levels, so that first-year students of Russian can be exposed to
third-year students of Russian.  I anticipate that it will be helpful for
the students at the earlier stages of instruction to see peers who are
succeeding and helpful for students at the later stages of instruction to
recognize that they have accomplished quite a bit since starting their
study of the language.

Interestingly, after having slowed down the grammatical syllabus in the
first four semesters of instruction, we found that our students were better
prepared for third year, not worse!  Previously we had moved rather rapidly
through the grammatical syllabus and then found that we had to review and
repeat a number of topics.  (What we cover does not equal what they learn.)
Having slowed the syllabus down, we are now able to move forward with less
review and repeat.  And, by the same token, the students have more positive
feelings about the language, as opposed to the sense that they still "can't
get it."

I hope that this information is helpful.

Ben Rifkin


**********************************
Benjamin Rifkin
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive, Madison, WI  53706
(608) 262-1623; fax (608) 265-2814
e-mail:  brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu