La Tica Brava ([info]bluegoddess88) wrote in [info]oberlin,
@ 2006-10-24 14:31:00
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Anyone taken Intensive Russian over winter term before? Would you recommend it?

Actually, any advice regarding Russian would be useful...someone told me it's not worth taking if I'm not willing to major in it. Is that true?

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[info]msgootch
2006-10-24 03:14 pm UTC (link)
I took intensive greek over winter term a couple years ago and it was really intense. But because I wasn't interested in going into second semester greek afterwards, I was basically able to get out of it what I wanted and not do all the work. I'm not sure if/how russian would be different.

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[info]mogwit
2006-10-24 08:53 pm UTC (link)
Same here, except it was last year.
Go for it!

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[info]myhappyface
2006-10-24 06:24 pm UTC (link)
I'm in Russian 101 with Newlin right now - it's weird and exciting and I love it more than any other class, but I don't intend to major in it, and I'm not sure I'll continue with it next semester. You should talk to him about winter term, though; he mentioned it in class this afternoon. It might be interesting to learn an entire semester's worth of stuff in four weeks (after I got over the numerous ulcers that would no doubt develop).

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[info]lizzels
2006-10-24 07:43 pm UTC (link)
I took intensive Russian winter term of 2001, so it may have changed significantly since then, but I'll still offer my two cents.

I think it is a waste of time unless you are planning on taking Russian 102 second semester. It is VERY intense. You will spend 5-6 hours a day in class and a couple more hours on homework. You really do a whole semester's worth of Russian in one month. (And keep in mind, you are condensing a class that usually meets every single day.) I do not remember a single thing I learned, since I did not take 102 in the spring.

It is a great way to start a language, if you want to continue with it. But I found it tedious and boring compared to the more interesting projects my friends were doing for their winter terms, and I had no intention of continuing in Russian.

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[info]lo_spettro
2006-10-24 10:27 pm UTC (link)
I took it because I like languages, and didn't know anything about Russian. After winter term, I started with Russian 102, but dropped out after like a month. I can now remember, off the top of my head, only how to say yes, no, hello, thank you, fuck you, and I know where you live.

That said, a couple months later, I got an email ostensibly in English from someone with a .ru address. I wrote back "I cannot understand your question" in English and Russian. Couple days later, I got a response in Russian. Using the textbooks I got and the few notes I took, I wrote the person a reply, and after sending it showed it to the student who taught the winter term session. She said it was almost completely correct, and was in fact more grammatically correct than the question I had received, who was apparently a teenager in a hurry.

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[info]lobotomy42
2006-10-25 01:50 am UTC (link)
I took it in Winter Term of the 2002-2003 school year. It was a lot of work, and pretty fun, but not insanely difficult or anything. However, you are compressing a lot of work into 3 weeks, so I don't think you'll end up *quite* as well off as if you had just taken Russian 101. Nonetheless, I was ok for Russian 102, and even survived 201 (or was it 203?)

In any event, you probably won't get much out of it if you're not going to at least continue on in Russian.

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