University of Pittsburgh
Summer Russian Language Institute

This course will be team-taught by two instructors from the University of Pittsburgh. Instructors' office hours are by appointment during the intensive summer program. Contact information for instructors will be made known during the first class session.

Required Materials

Davidson, D. et al. Live from Moscow: Russian Stage One. Volumes 1 and 2. Dubuque: Kendall Hunt, 1996.

Recommended Materials

Cruise, Edwina J. English Grammar for Students of Russian. Ann Arbor: Olivia and Hill, 1987.

Web Site: http://www.pitt.edu/~slavic/sli/russian/1/

The web site for this course will serve as a central source of information. In addition to on-line versions of many written handouts from the course, it will also contain some materials that will not be made available in class. Students are encouraged to download/print this information if/when they find it useful.

Course Goals

This course is designed for students with no previous experience in the Russian language. In eight weeks students will gain the ability to hold simple conversations on everyday topics, negotiate most basic social situations, read texts of easy to moderate difficulty, and to write for practical communication.

Policies and Procedures

Attendance is required at all class sessions and homework must be completed on the night that it is assigned. Students are expected to participate fully in classroom activities, and all classroom performance is evaluated.

Classroom Procedures

There will be five hours of instruction every weekday, three in the morning and two in the afternoon with an hour for lunch. On Wednesdays, the afternoon hours will be taken up by the Russian Film Series. On Fridays, the last hour will be spent in a cultural activity. These afternoon activities are part of the curriculum and attendance is required.

Class periods will be of unequal length, but there will generally be two breaks during the three-hour morning session, and one break during the afternoon. The language of instruction and classroom activities during each "hour' will be either Russian-only or English/Russian. As the summer progresses, an increasing percentage of class "hours" will be Russian-only as English-language instruction is reduced to a minimum. By the end of the summer, no more than one hour per day will use any English at all.

The class will split into two small groups for the afternoon hours. The instructors will alternate between the two groups by week, which is to say that each group will have one instructor during weeks one, three, five, and seven, and the other instructor during weeks two, four, six, and eight.

Homework Assignments and Preparation for Class

Students must prepare at home thoroughly for every class. Most of the new vocabulary and grammar structures will be learned by the students at home; grammar will not be taught in class. It is absolutely crucial that students understand that homework is not so much designed to practice what has been learned in class that day, but to teach students what they must know in order to participate in class the following day.

Homework assignments will have a regular structure and will usually consist of the following:

1. Video. As this is a video-based course, students will be expected to view and work through a segment of the video story each night at home. Written exercises from the textbook will be assigned to guide students through the viewing. Once the written exercises are completed, students should be prepared to discuss the video segment the next day in class.
2. Analysis: Each day students will be asked to read and learn new grammatical structures of the language. Some of these topics will be complex and students may have to reread, gloss, highlight, or even take notes on these explications of grammar.
3. Reading: About every three days students will be asked to work through a reading passage in Russian. Written exercises from the textbook will be assigned to guide students through the reading. Once these exercises have been successfully completed, the student can consider that he/she has completed the reading assignment. Students are not expected nor required to understand everything in these reading passages.
4. Exercises will be selected from the textbook each night to be prepared for classroom activity the next day. Preparing these exercises will involve learning new vocabulary and mastering the specific grammatical structure being practiced. The student's daily grade will in large part be determined by how well these exercises are prepared.
5. Written exercises will be assigned from the exercise book. Many of these exercises will require the use of the audio tape that comes with the textbook package. Students without access to their own or a friend's cassette player will need to do these exercises in the language laboratory. These exercises are to be handed in at 9:00 am on the day they are due.

Whenever possible, students should complete the individual parts of the homework assignment in the order they are listed on the assignment sheet and/or web page. Please note that assignment segments will sometimes deviate from the customary or expected order. This is not arbitrary and should be observed whenever possible.

Evaluation and Grading

Students ability to participate and perform in all classroom activities will be evaluated twice each day, morning and afternoon. These grades will be averaged into a "classroom daily grade."

There will be a small written test at the end of each chapter of the textbook with the exception of chapter 6 (replaced by midterm), 13, and 14 (replaced by final exam). Thus, 11 chapter tests are anticipated, although this number may be adjusted in the course of the summer.

There will be four oral tests scheduled at the end of weeks two, three, five, and six. The midterm and final exams will also contain "oral components."

Written homework will be evaluated each day for one daily homework grade.

The final course grade will be calculated using the following percentages:

Any student with perfect attendance at the end of the summer will have his/her lowest chapter test score dropped from the average.

Any student who misses more than ten class "hours" (i.e., two full days) will have his/her final grade lowered one full letter grade (e.g., B+ becomes C+).

Any student who misses more than fifteen class "hours" (i.e., three full days) will have his/her final grade lowered two full letter grades (e.g., A- becomes C-).

Any student who misses twenty class "hours" will automatically fail the course.

A student who misses a test or exam due to serious personal illness must document this illness with a physician's note in order to have the failing grade removed from the grade average. Please note that except for this one situation, we do not make a distinction between excused and unexcused absences.