Mice in the cookie jar

[Emily Tall]

Although I teach at a public university, your problems are very familiar! In
fact, they are identical, except that the students don't have to be in class.
Until Olga Kagan writes her book/web site on a course for emigres, all I can say
is: 1) be prepared in advance with special guidelines/tests for those students,
i.e. "take off" more for spelling; make it clear that homework is part of their
grade, and specify how much (I don't know if this works in schools); you might
take a look at school Russian texts from Russia. That might be a lot of work,
 but
I have used exercises from 5-6th grade books for some of my students. Maybe you
could have the students do exercises from Khavronina's "Russian in Exercises."
 By
the way, I have never seen worse spellers than some of my "heritage speakers"
 who
haven't gone to school in Russia. Typical errors: misplacing soft signs;
unstressed vowels. It's a really tough problem. Prof. Kagan of UCLA has an
 unpub.
article on the subject. You might write to her and request it. E. Tall

Brian Lehmann wrote:

> Dear colleague,
>
> If you are a teacher of Russian in the public schools and have had half baked
> native speakers (of both Russian and Ukrainian descent) thrown into your
> classes, then you know what I am struggling with and I would appreciate any
> advice you might have.
>
> In my Russian I class (mostly freshmen), I have 22 students, two of which are
> from Russian speaking families.  They are not fluent nor very literate, but
> have a considerable knowledge of the language.
>
> In my Russian II class (mostly sophmores), I have 27 students, two of which
> are from Russian families and 2 from Ukrainian.  They are fairly fluent and
> can read newspaper level texts, but have trouble writing correctly.
>
> Many of these students are put off by the elementary nature of the work that
> we do in class.  When I ask them to do group work with other students, they
> often withdraw, preferring to study by themselves.  Some of them can't be
> bothered with learning the grammar of their language and are overconfident
> and smug about their abilities.  Some seem interested mostly in an easy
> grade, which is not always happening because of non-participation, excessive
> abscences, and non-completion of homework assignments.
>
> Regular students sometimes feel inferior/intimidated because of the superiour
> knowledge of the "natives" and are reluctant to participate.  I do not have
> the time and energy to create a separate program for these kids. Maybe there
> is something out there written for them???
>
> Does this sound familiar to anyone??
>
> Brian Lehmann
> uchityel at aol.com