Russian-American Student Writing Exchange (American Home=?Windows-1252?Q?=96Vladimir=2C_?=Russia)

[Johnson, David Matthew]

Dear Russian Language Teaching Colleagues,

The American Home's 2011-2012 Russian-American Student Writing Exchange is still accepting nominations of highly motivated and responsible third and fourth year American students, and complete classes of such students, who are interested in improving their Russian writing skills while communicating with their Russian peers.

More information about the program is below.

I hope that we will have the opportunity to welcome your students to the Writing Exchange!

Sincerely,
David M. Johnson
Coordinator, Intensive Russian Program, American Home (www.serendipity-russia.com<http://www.serendipity-russia.com/>)
Lecturer in Russian, Vanderbilt University (david.matthew.johnson at vanderbilt.edu<mailto:david.matthew.johnson at vanderbilt.edu>)
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2011-2012 AMERICAN HOME RUSSIAN-AMERICAN STUDENT WRITING EXCHANGE – an opportunity to provide advanced language students additional opportunities to communicate in Russian with their Russian peers.

The Writing Exchange is sponsored by the American Home in Vladimir, Russia, in cooperation with the English faculty of the Department of Philology at Vladimir State University.

While participating in the Writing Exchange, Russian and American students will regularly communicate once a month via email about selected topics.  They will write in their language of study, with their partners correcting their grammatical, lexical, stylistic, and phraseological mistakes and then responding to what has been written, as appropriate, in their own language of study.

The program matches highly-motivated and responsible third and fourth year American students with their Russian peers from advanced English classes at Vladimir State University.  (It may also be possible to pair one or two additional complete classes of advanced American students with classes of advanced Russian students.  One such paring from last year’s Exchange is continuing this fall.)

Each month participants must be willing and eager to complete the Exchange's four steps:
1) During the first half of each month students write on the selected topic;
2) By the middle of each month their letters are exchanged via email;
3) During the second half of each month they correct their partners' letters (grammar, style, etc.), adding comments and reactions about the content;
4) By the end of each month the corrected letters with comments are exchanged.
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COMMENTS FROM PARTICIPANTS IN THE 2010-11 WRITING EXCHANGE (35 American students from 12 universities participated in the 2010-2011 Exchange):

“It is really nice to have an exchange with a Russian in which they feel totally comfortable (and actually compelled) to correct my mistakes.”

“I've enjoyed the opportunity to participate and think the program runs well. Being able to communicate with a native speaker has been a big help.”

“The corrections to my letters were very helpful in making my Russian smoother and closer to that of a native speaker.”

“It was a huge stretch for me, but very helpful for vocabulary and just writing in general.”

“It helped me see some of my common mistakes and also the exchange students helped me correct the errors. “

“Sasha frequently rephrased my technically correct sentences to sound better and make more sense in ways I wasn't familiar with.”

“It certainly kept me from forgetting much of what I learned”

“My participation has helped me outline some of my most frequent mistakes in written Russian.”


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