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Russian 198-199-200-201
Advanced Introductory Russian
Полуторный курс
Middlebury Russian School: Summer 2001
Professor Jason Merrill and Staff
Джейсон Ральфович Меррилл
Office and Office Hours to be announced in class.
Добро пожаловать в Русскую школу!
Course Description | Syllabus
This course is very intensive and we expect you to work very hard.
However, students who put in the effort make great gains in their language
skills. Get your books as soon as possible (if you do not have them
already)
Course Goals
By the end of this course you will be able to talk about a variety of
themes including, family, education, travel, life in Russia, free time,
health, and visiting friends. You will have a solid grasp of the basic
formation of the six Russian grammatical cases (singular and plural),
and you be able to use them in a variety of constructions. You will
know many more verbs and be able to use them in more complex narratives.
You will have a better understanding of verbal aspect and motion verbs.
In addition to language study, you will be introduced to many of the
great names and achievements of Russian culture, and will have met many
others who are also interested in Russian language and culture!
p.s.: make sure you learn the adjective полуторный now - you'll need
it often!
Course Grade
The course grade for this course will be determined according to the
following formula:
Class Participation 05%
Compositions 10%
Homework (excl. compositions) 15%
Quizzes 05%
Unit Tests 30%
Final Examination 20%
Oral Examinations 10%
Participation in Co-Curricular Program 05%
Class Participation: For every class session (of which there
are 4-5 a day) for which you are absent without a legitimate excuse
(i.e., illness), your class participation grade will be reduced 3%.
For instance, if you miss three days, your class participation grade
will be 91% For every class session for which you are late, your class
participation grade will be reduced 1%.
*Attendance Policy: This is a performance class. Accordingly,
in addition to these penalties, students who miss class without a medical
excuse will be penalized one point from the final course average for
each hour of class they have missed. For instance, if a student misses
one entire day (5 class sessions), and that student's final course average
is 93, the student will get a grade of 88 (93-5=88).
Please note, however, that class participation is not simply an attendance
grade. You are expected to come to class prepared and ready to participate
in the day's activities.
Homework Exercises will be graded according to the following
scale:
5 points Submitted on time and completed with good effort
4 points Submitted on time, 50%-80% correct
3 points Submitted on time, less than 50% correct
0 points Not submitted / Late
No late homework will be accepted without a legitimate excuse (e.g.,
illness). The lowest 3 grades for homework will be eliminated in the
grading process. The semester grade for homework will be the percentage
of total homework points earned (of the total homework points possible).
Homework Expectations: You can expect to spend 6-8 hours of time
on homework every day. In the weekly syllabus, the word "prepare"
(готовить) means that you should review the material and be prepared
to discuss it or present it in class; you may wish to write down notes,
but writing is not required and nothing in writing will be collected
in class for this assignment. The word "write" (писать) will
be used whenever written work will be collected in class.
In grading your homework, your instructors will note errors and provide
help with finding with errors and better expressions; it is, however,
your responsibility to review the instructors' comments and correct
your homeworks yourself. If you have any problems of course feel free
to ask. Keep in mind that homework problems tend to reappear on quizzes
and tests.
Graded Compositions will be graded as follows:
Communicative Content 30 points
Appropriate Lexicon 15 points
Grammatical Accuracy and Spelling 30 points
Syntax 15 points
Originality/Creativity 10 points
Every composition will be returned to you with comments to help your
grammar and questions to help you write in more depth. You will rewrite
the composition for the assigned deadline, and the final assignment
grade will depend on how well you incorporate the instructors' comments
into your final draft.
Quizzes will occasionally be given in class. They will be on
focused topics (a set of words, conjugating a few verbs) of which you
will be warned ahead of time.
Written Tests will consist of listening and reading comprehension
tasks, fill-in-the-blanks and translation passages based on grammar,
vocabulary and syntax from the given units, questions on the readings,
films, and poetry in the units being tested.
Oral Exams: A detailed description of what to expect on each oral
exam will be distributed before each exam.
Special Needs: If you have any special learning needs, please
discuss them with me or with the representative of the ADA office on
the Middlebury Campus. I am personally committed to providing excellent
instruction to all learners.
Class Schedule: There will be four hours of class meetings every
day M-F. After a short period to cover homework questions, class will
be conducted in small groups for the first three hours (poetry, texts
in textbook; grammar; lexicon, conversational practice and reading of
short stories, newspaper articles). The final hour of each class session
will be devoted to a presentation of the grammatical and syntactical
topics assigned for the next day and listening comprehension activities.
An important component of our course will be meetings (twice a week)
with a phonetics instructor to work on pronunciation. You will sign
up for times in class. Attendance at these meetings is mandatory and
will count as part of your homework grade.
In addition to our regular class meetings, almost every Tuesday night
at 6:30 we will view Russian films especially selected for levels 1,
1.5, and 2. The films will be shown with English subtitles. We will
make extensive use of the films in class on Wednesdays.
All students are REQUIRED to participate in the "All-School"
exit testing, which is a part of your language course experience. Students
whose final grade for the course is between two grades will have their
grade determined by the progress they show on the
"All-School" exit tests. Students who fail to take all the
exit tests, without a medical excuse, will not receive credit for the
course.
Required Textbooks
1. Kathryn Henry, Joanna Robin, Richard Robin: Голоса. A Basic Course
in Russian. Prentice Hall (second edition). Volumes One and Two, Textbooks
and Workbooks.
2. Ol'ga Kagan and Frank Miller. В пути. Russian Grammar in Context.
Prentice Hall. Textbook and Workbook.
Recommended Books
A good English-Russian/Russian-English Dictionary (such as Katzner).
Leed & Paperno's 5,000 Russian Words and All Their Inflected
Forms.
Edwina J. Cruise, English Grammar for Students of Russian.
Ozhegov's Russian Dictionary.
How to be a better language learner.
All of these books have been ordered and should be available in the
bookstore.
About the Audiotapes
The audiotapes for this course have been DIGITIZED. You can listen to
the tapes from any computer connected to the campus network. If you
have a laptop and the proper cable, you can connect to the campus network
in your own room in the dormitory. You can also go to any computer lab
on campus, including those in Sunderland or Voter Hall, and use any
computer (Macintosh or PC) there to listen to the audiotapes.
Here is the URL/password for Russian School Curricular Resources:
http://cweb.middlebury.edu/ls/russian/
username: russian; password: audio
Dialogs for V Puti are contained in the following site:
http://cweb.middlebury.edu/ls/russian/intermediate/
For audiotape assignments to listen to poetry, use the
following URL:
cweb.middlebury.edu/cr/russian/poetry
(username: russian; password: audio)
You MUST use both the URL and the username and password to gain access
to these tapes!
Course Description | Syllabus
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