Anyone on here ever taken these classes? Currently signed up for both of them for 2014/2015. Moved to Canada from Russia when I was 5, still speak Russian fluently at home but not the best (sometimes some English works its way into the convo). Haven't done any Russian reading/writing in a while but I'm pretty confident I can write a decent birthday card. How hard do you guys think it would be for me?

These are introductory language courses, intended for people with no previous knowledge of the language. Obviously, you have an edge on the matter, and should do well. Unfortunately, previous experience sometimes has a bad effect, introducing bad habits and over-confidence. But then, one factor should balance out the other, and you should then be on even ground. These courses are often taught by dynamic teachers who go out of their way to make the experience interesting. Good luck!

gogo RUS

Originally Posted by jitnikovi

gogo RUS

)))))

I took Russian 1Z03 last year. It's probably one of the easiest courses I've ever taken, and I didn't go in knowing any slavic languages whatsoever nor do I have Eastern European heritage.

The prof is okay... I wouldn't say she's the best because she doesn't try and make students participate. All oral stuff was her just talking in English most of the time, or us telling her the 1 word answers to the fill-in-the-blank homework problems.

Seeing as you already speak Russian, you will very easily get a 12 with minimal effort. If you already know the Cyrillic alphabet (including the cursive version), you probably won't learn anything at all. If your objective is to just get a 12, then this is the course for you. Otherwise I'd recommend Polish 1Z03, which was a really good course, but unfortunately it doesn't appear to be offered this year.

Hope that helps!

And by the way: the professor made no effort whatsoever to weed out the students who already speak Russian, so don't worry about being "caught" already knowing the language - probably half the students were native Russian speakers, lol.

Originally Posted by oldviking

Unfortunately, previous experience sometimes has a bad effect, introducing bad habits and over-confidence.

Yup, I saw many Polish speaking students raised in Canada get absolutely crushed in Polish 1Z03 when it came to test time and they realized they don't know how to spell anything

Wait, just how exactly is it fair to allow people who are already somewhat fluent in a language to take a very basic course about that same language?

If anyone is actually free to do this just for an easy 12, then I sincerely hope they get crushed by the course.

Originally Posted by Phoneup

Wait, just how exactly is it fair to allow people who are already somewhat fluent in a language to take a very basic course about that same language?

If anyone is actually free to do this just for an easy 12, then I sincerely hope they get crushed by the course.

Technically, they are supposed to weed them out, but at the same time, a lot of these courses have just barely enough students to even run. If they were to weed out the native speakers, the class would likely be cancelled.

It's kind of good in a way; in the Polish class, the prof gave the fluent speakers extra work to help them learn how to write properly and used them as kind of fake TAs to help people who actually didn't know the language.

Originally Posted by Ownaginatios

Technically, they are supposed to weed them out, but at the same time, a lot of these courses have just barely enough students to even run. If they were to weed out the native speakers, the class would likely be cancelled.

It's kind of good in a way; in the Polish class, the prof gave the fluent speakers extra work to help them learn how to write properly and used them as kind of fake TAs to help people who actually didn't know the language.

So in other words, these classes exist as a money-grab.

Calling these classes a "money grab" is a bit unfair. People studying Linguistics, as I did, need credit in language courses as programme requirements, as well as for the obvious reason of getting exposure to a variety of languages. As it happens, widespread support for enrolling in these courses in fading. There are financial pressures upon the Humanities faculty that have led to cutting back drastically on the extent of language courses to be offered, especially at the more advanced levels.

Your experience in the Polish class is an example of how the instructor needs to cope with a range of previous knowledge, and still make the programme meaningful.

There is a process for placement, but sometimes timetable considerations over-rule. For example, I took 2ZZ3 German before 2Z03, logically the earlier course, simply because of timetabling.

In my last Sanskrit class, half the class was named Patel, and most of the rest were from the Indian sub-continent. If you start excluding people because of background knowledge, you might end up having to put people in different math classes depending on whether they can do arithmetic!