undergraduate Honors in Russian

[Marc Robinson]

What we have done is to ask for the regular honors paper in English and
that the student write an abstract of the paper in Russian.  I believe
that it is unreasonable to truly expect the sort of depth that we want
from an honors student  if they are writing in Russian.  (The level of
fluency attainable in the more commonly taught languages is of course
much higher after 3 years).  This plan seems to have worked well for us,
it does force the students to deal with the major aspects of their
research topic in Russian for the abstract.
Marc Robinson
St. Olaf College

LeBlanc, Ronald wrote:

>Dear SEELANGers,
>
>I'm hoping to get some feedback from those of you who have some experience working with Honors theses for undergraduate majors.
>
>Our Russian Program at UNH has for a long time now been offering graduating seniors the opportunity to conduct research -- and write a 30-40 page Honors thesis -- on a topic involving Russian language, literature, or culture.  Although some of the research has been conducted in Russian (particularly the primary sources), the thesis itself has been written in English.
>
>Recently the suggestion was made that our Honors students should be writing this thesis in Russian (this is what is currently being done in our French, German, and Spanish programs on campus, but not in Russian or Classics).
>
>There is some concern that the intellectual level of the thesis will decline significantly if the thesis must be written in Russian, given the difficulty of attaining a high enough level of proficiency in the language by the end of the junior year.
>
>Do any of you teach in a Russian program or department where an Honors thesis (or senior thesis, for that matter) is written in Russian?  If so, have you been pleased with the results?
>
>Feel free to respond to me off-list (ronald.leblanc at unh.edu) if you do not care to make your views/experience public.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>
>Ron LeBlanc
>
>
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