Level of Difficulty of Russian

[Benjamin Rifkin]

The ÜS Foreign Service Institute has ranked some of the more commonly
studied and taught languages into four major categories of difficulty.

Level 1:  Romance languages and Swahili (easiest for American
learners who are native speakers of English)
Level 2:  Germanic languages and Bulgarian
Level 3:  All other Slavic languages
Level 4:  Arabic, Chinese, Japanaese, Korean

Im not sure where this is written up in government publications, but
it is described in Alice Omaggio- Hadley's methodology textbook,
_Teaching Languages in Context_ published, in its third edition, by
Heinle & Heinle in 2000.

- BR



>Does anyone know where I can find the ranking (level of difficulty) of
>Russian as compared to Spanish, French, German, Chinese and Japanese?  I am
>also interested in how much longer it takes the student of Russian to
>attain intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency as compared to the
>student of Spanish, French, German, Chinese and Japanese.
>
>Please respond to me off line at peterska at union.edu .
>
>Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
>
>Kristin Peterson
>Assistant Professor of Russian
>Department of Modern Languages
>Union College
>peterska at union.edu
>(518) 388-7105
>
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--


Benjamin Rifkin

Professor of Slavic Languages, Slavic Dept., UW-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Dr.
Madison, WI  53706 USA
voice: 608/262-1623; fax: 608/265-2814
http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/slavic/rifkin/

Director of the Russian School
Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT  05753
voice:  802/443-5533; fax: 802/443-5394
http://www.middlebury.edu/~ls/Russian/

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