Russian rap and how to get students to study Russian

[Kat Tancock]

Well, hopefully in the future there will be more multilingual programming.
One would think that in the age of the golf channel there would be at least
as many viewers for a Slavic channel, even one channel for all of North
America!

One thing I love to show to students is the soap "do svidanya, leto" from
the BBC Russian series - made sometime before I was born, I think! But it's
still popular - it's easy to resurrect old videos these days, because the
retro factor makes them popular with students.

Kat

> From: David Kaiser <dwkaiser at MIDWAY.UCHICAGO.EDU>
> Reply-To: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
> <SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU>
> Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 22:28:00 -0500
> To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
> Subject: Re: Russian rap and how to get students to study Russian
>
> I have to say, flipping past cheesy Spanish soap operas on cable makes me
> jealous. I wish it was that easy to find programming in Russian and Polish.
> Here in Chicago, one of the most Russian/Polish of cities in North America,
> inlanguage TV is hard to find, we get an hour a night in Polish and half
> hour in Russian, and I think that's probably better than anywhere in the US
> except NY. Does anyone know if there are foreign language channels on
> DirecTV or any other general satellite subscription service? We have Polish
> radio, which is great, even though its AM, but it would be nice if we had
> TV. UChicago has SCOLA, but I have to admit, it seems like a pain to use,
> we have to reserve time and have a cassette made for later use, etc, etc.
> It would be nice if it were possible to simply flip on a channel and hear
> Polish/Rusian/Czech, just like the Spanish students can. Any help?
>
> Dave Kaiser
> UofChicago
>
>
>
>
>
> At 12:10 PM 6/10/00 -0500, you wrote:
>>> Oh, you're so right! Cheesy pop music works great too, and it's great for
>>> lower levels, because the vocab terms aren't too complex. I think it would
>>> be fun to make a tape of Russian music etc. (poetry could even be
>> included)
>>> a compulsory part of a course, like a textbook. By the end of the class
>> the
>>> goal would be to have made it through the whole tape (hopefully memorizing
>>> the whole thing as well).
>>>
>>> Another good thing about music is students don't get as bored with it when
>>> it is listened to repeatedly. I have to say, I read Stantsionnyj
>> Smotritel'
>>> so many times through my degree, in at least three variants, that I can
>>> barely stand the story now! (Sorry, Pushkin). Another thing we read a lot
>>> was Chekhov's "comedies" - which weren't nearly as funny when it took you
>>> ten times as long to get through the story than he intended.
>>>
>>> Kat
>>
>> In my practice I took advantage of my students' interest to action movies
>> and other unsophisticated fun stuff. No, I did not shoot movies. But I wrote
>> a catching story full of suspence. I lead the main character through lots of
>> adventures as well as the whole Russian grammar, words of motion and idioms.
>> The story was broken down into small pieces, each ending in suspence. I tape
>> recorded the story with my Russian speaking friends, mixing it with music
>> and some sound effects (wind, gunshots, police sirens, etc.). The students
>> received  a tape for every single home assignments and were supposed to
>> either transcribe the piece or answer the questions to the piece (to control
>> listening comprehension). In class more exercises followed. The beauty of
>> this was that the idioms and grammar were studied in the context of the
>> whole story, and listening comprehension skills developed rapidly. Besides,
>> students were always anxious to know what would follow.
>> (In some cases I invited them to continue).
>>
>> Now I am working on putting the story online. The same thing, but I don't
>> have to take care of cassettes, and the exercices can be done online with
>> the help option, with hyperlinks to some Russian sites and lots and lots of
>> more fun stuff!!!!!!!!!!!
>>
>> If you are interested, I can give you more details. This is fun and it
>> works!
>>
>> 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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>
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> On the contrary, it enlarged my sense of myself."
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