Looking for your opinions on teaching time to beginning Russian students

[Devin Browne]

Greetings all!

I'm teaching a two-year high school level course called Foundations Russian
(it's part of our district's IB program).  The class is offered during 11th
and 12th grade.  Each high school year is supposed to be equivalent to a
college semester of Russian.

I'm only in the second year of teaching the course (therefore I have a
Russian 1 and a Russian 2 class), so I'm still trying to figure things out.
We're using Golosa and we have just gone over time on the hour.  I don't
think the text covers much more than that but I'd like to give students an
easy way to address time issues when they sit for their IB exams in the
spring.  Is it reasonable to teach them how to tell time "digitally,"
meaning how they might read a 24-hour clock (e.g., "одиннадцать часов пять
минут" for 11:05)?  After a two-year fairly intensive course in a
foundations-level language, IB wants students to have "survival level"
skills in the target language.  I'm wondering if teaching students to tell
time using the 24-hours system would give them a less complicated but
effective way of telling time in Russian without getting bogged down in
complexities.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance.  :-)

Devin

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