classroom hours survey summary

[Benjamin Rifkin]

Dear SEELANGers:

As promised, here is a summary of the data I received on average hours
of instruction in Russian.

When I adjusted for semester and quarter length (to 30 weeks of
instruction per year)

average first year Russian course meets 4.48 hours per week
average second year Russian course meets 4.06 hours per week
average third-year Russian course meets 3.09 hours per week
average fourth-year Russian course meets 2.63 hours per week

N = 34 institutions responding

several institutions reported no language courses at the 3rd or 4th
year levels were offered (not that there were no enrollments; there
were no courses.)

The total average classroom instructional hours in a Russian program as
reported by these respondents is 428.21 hours.  Interestingly, by
comparison, the survey I conducted in another listserv, for language
program directors (largely in Spanish, French and German) showed
virtually the same response (421.74 total classroom hours in these
languages.)

I hope this is useful information for you: I find it very revealing and
I thank all who responded to my query.

With best wishes to all for a happy & healthy holiday season,

Ben Rifkin

*************
Benjamin Rifkin
Professor and Chair, UW-Madison Slavic Dept.
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706 USA
Voice (608) 262-1623; Fax (608) 265-2814
http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/slavic

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