Language classification

[Francoise Rosset]

>Relative "difficulty" of languages for English speakers in terms of time
>needed to learn them is given in
>http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html
>- based on information from the Foreign Service Institute of the US
>Department of State.

Thanks, Jenny.

I do want to point out, for those still following this thread, that 
the particular scale above is not nearly as discriminating. It 
creates only three categories, lumping a bunch of languages, 
including Russian, under a very broad category II.
The other scale, also developed by the government and used at 
Monterey, is more what I was looking for: that scale has four 
categories, and separates the middle category into 2 and 3 - Russian 
is in the latter.

By way of an explanation: I am putting together the Russian 
department's report on "writing accross the curriculum." As 
coordinator of both German and Russian, I want to be sure to stress 
the documented distance (the more distant the better) between either 
of those and the more traditional, level 1 French and Spanish, needed 
for acquiring comparable proficiency levels. Otherwise the "default" 
criteria for judging writing proficiency gets determined by what 
students accomplish ... in Spanish. It is a lot easier to require 
serious and substantive college level papers and Honors theses be 
written in Spanish than in Russian.
For those who wish to look it up, this particular conversation was 
already held on SEELangs, back in 2005; try the subjects "language 
categories" and "undergraduate honors"

And again, thanks for the rapid and detailed responses,
-FR


-- 

Francoise Rosset
Chair, Russian and Russian Studies
Coordinator, German and Russian
Wheaton College                         
Norton, Massachusetts 02766
        
phone: 	(508) 286-3696
fax #:   	(508) 286-3640
e-mail: FRosset at wheatonma.edu

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