Why students do not study Russian anymore

[Pavel Samsonov]

> Just look at the amount of time on task that one must devote to reach
certain
> proficiency milestones in each language. The State Department has the
stats. If
> memory serves me (and someone correct me if I am off on the figures), 50%
of
> their learners reach ILR S3, R3 (speaking, reading level three - in theory
the
> ILR equivalent of ACTFL Superior, but in fact somewhat less)  in Spanish
and
> French after something like 400-500 hours of instruction. The figure for
Russian
> is over 1000 and far more for that in Japanese. I believe that required
time on
> task is a pretty good measure of difficulty.

There is yet another aspect of the problem. Universities normally prefer to
employ  professors of Russian with a research background - those who have
published a multitude of long articles in thick journals. And these
professors tend to teach exactly what they publish - the intricacies of the
Russian grammar, the subtextual style of Platonov's prose, or the structure
of Pushkin's verse.
This all would be fine if their teaching were consistent with the level of
their students' proficiency. In some (if not many) cases they tend to teach
ABOUT the language, rather than the language per se.
In some universities students just attend lectures on the Russian grammar or
phonetics, without actually learning how to use them. This is a hangover
from the cold war days when oral skills in Russian were needed mostly by the
military and secret service. All the rest were supposed to STUDY Russian
rather than learn how to use it.

Now that the cold war is over, the need for oral skills in Russian have not
emerged. Russian is not a very promising field of business or any other
endeavor.
All the above has contributed to the decline of Russian.

With compliments,

Pavel (Paul) Samsonov
EDAD, College of Education,
Texas A&M University
tel. (409) 862-7771 (lab)
      (409) 862-9152 (home)
fax (409) 862-4347
e-mail p0s5658 at acs.tamu.edu

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