undergraduate Honors in Russian

[LeBlanc, Ronald]

Dear Ben, Marc (Robinson), and those several other colleagues who responded off-list,

Thank you all for the very illuminating feedback you've provided on Honors theses for undergraduate Russian majors.  This whole conversation has been very informative for me.

I happen to be among those who favor our current arrangement at UNH, whereby students conduct some of their research in Russian, but write their 30-40-page Honors thesis in English (they are expected to cite primary sources in the original Russian).  We currently require that our students produce a three-page abstract/synopsis of their thesis in Russian anyway. 

I personally believe that we -- and especially our students -- would be much better off if we were to find ways to incorporate a larger number of more manageable writing activities into the curriculum in our 3rd-year and 4th-year Russian language classes rather than expect them, right before graduation, suddenly to write a much longer composition (and to support an extended argument) in Russian.

And I'm also in agreement with Ben and others who remind us that Russian -- unlike more commonly taught languages like French, Spanish, and German -- is a category 3 language that requires more hours of classroom instruction before our students can reasonably be expected to attain the advanced level of proficiency needed to write a decent Honors thesis in Russian. 

Thanks again to all of you for your responses.

Best,

Ron

-----Original Message-----
From:	Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list on behalf of Benjamin Rifkin
Sent:	Mon 2/28/2005 1:59 PM
To:	SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Cc:	
Subject:	Re: [SEELANGS] undergraduate Honors in Russian

At UW-Madison the honors thesis is written in English with citations in  
Russian.

Russian is a category 3 language (requiring more than 700 hours of  
classroom instruction to attain advanced level proficiency), where as  
French and Spanish are category 1 and German category 2 languages.   
Students of French, German and Spanish often have substantial learning  
experiences before coming to college; with the elimination of many  
Russian programs on the high school level in the US, the same cannot be  
said of college-level students of Russian.  To my mind, to require  
students to write honors theses in Russian is to significantly reduce  
the intellectual content of the thesis or to restrict the honors thesis  
program to native speakers of Russian and those few American-born  
students with unusual learning histories (e.g., parent was posted to  
Moscow, grew up in Moscow and attended a Russian school for grades  
8-11, etc.)

Sincerely,

Ben Rifkin

On Feb 28, 2005, at 11:30 AM, 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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******'
Benjamin Rifkin
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Professor and Chair, Slavic Dept.  (Slavic)
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Dr.
Madison, WI 53706 USA
(608) 262-1623; fax (608) 265-2814
polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/slavic

Director, Center for Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA)
210 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706 USA
(608) 262-3379; fax (608) 890-0267
www.wisc.edu/creeca

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