classroom hours survey

[Benjamin Rifkin]

Dear SEELANGers:

Thanks to colleagues for providing information about the hours in their
Russian programs.  I now have over 40 responses.  Here are the results:

The average first year Russian class meets 4.48 hours per week 30 weeks
per year.
The average second year Russian class meets 4.13 hours per week 30
weeks per year.
The average third year Russian class meets 3.1 hours per week 30 weeks
per year.
The average fourth year Russian class meets 2.45 hours per week 30
weeks per year.

The average 4-year Russian college curriculum, based on the sample of
responses to my query on SEELANGs, offers 424.78 hours of classroom
instruction.  (These results are similar to those found in a survey of
language programs in more commonly taught languages, which showed
421.74 total hours of instruction in a four-year college curriculum.)

Notes:

(1) Most schools have three 10-week quarters or two 15-week semesters.
For data from institutions with quarters or semesters of different
durations, I took the total number of classroom hours per quarter or
per semester and divided it by 10 weeks per quarter or 15 weeks per
semester.  Thus, if a school reported 8 hours of class per week for
12-week semesters in first-year Russian, that would be a total of 96
class hours; this would be 6.4 hours per week in a 15-week semester.
This way, data from different academic institutions could be compiled
together to give an accurate picture of the total number of hours
students are in class.

(2) The hours for fourth-year Russian are lower because many
institutions reported that they had no fourth-year Russian class at all
or only one semester of a fourth-year course.

(3) At my presentation at the AATSEEL Conference in San Diego last
month, I presented data showing that students needed over 700 hours of
classroom instruction to attain advanced-level proficiencies in a
language like Russian.  This is consistent with research at the US
Department of State Foreign Service Institute.

I hope that this information is helpful.

Sincerely,

BR

*************
Benjamin Rifkin
Professor of Slavic Languages, UW-Madison
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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