Important Note from Professor Weiner
Wintersession
Notes on Wintersession Russian 101
from Professor Weiner
- Wintersession Russian 101 covers exactly the same material -- classwork, homework, quizzes, exams -- as fall-semester Russian 101. The Wintersession course takes fourteen days to cover as much material as the fall-semester course covers in thirteen weeks. This means that attendance is crucial; more than one absence means that you will have a very difficult time catching up. We are together five hours a day, and you should expect to spend around three to four hours per evening doing your homework. In other words, you need to commit about forty hours per week -- the equivalent of a full-time job -- to Wintersession Russian.
- The textbooks for the course are available at the Wellesley College Bookstore by 1 December. I strongly suggest that you purchase the books before going away for the holidays. Before coming to our first class session, you must have the entire Russian alphabet memorized and must be able to write all the letters of the Russian alphabet relatively easily. What I mean by this is that you should be able to see a printed Russian letter and instantly pronounce it more or less correctly, and that you should be able to sound out simple, printed Russian words with some difficulty. You do not have to memorize the names of the letters, or the order in which they appear in the Russian alphabet; I will do this with you in class, starting on the first day. For help with handwriting cyrillic letters, download the crucial Powerpoint file"Russian_handwriting.ppt" here or from from /Russian/Wintersession/syllabus.html.
- Class meets five days a week.
- The grader for the course will be Laura Rigge. Laura will lead the daily homework-correction session from 9:00 to 9:45, during which you will all correct your previous evening's homework as a large group. If questions come up, I will be happy to answer these during our classwork together. Laura will also be grading your quizzes, outside of class, on the day you hand them in. Be nice to Laura.
- Our daily schedule will be as follows:
- During breaks, you are all most welcome to make yourselves at home in the lounge (Founders 416), where we have Russian music, Russian television, Russian videotapes, etc., all at your disposal. Refreshments, coffee, tea and chilled Poland Spring water will be available there every day. There are women's and men's bathrooms at the other end of the fourth-floor corridor (next to the elevator). Snacks will magically appear quite often in the lounge, but you should plan on bringing your own snacks or lunch, or both, with you each day.
- Bring all three textbooks (Golosa textbook and workbook, and Oxford Russian Minidictionary) with you to class every day. You should also bring a sharp pencil; I strongly suggest that you use a good mechanical pencil.
- If you are not a Wellesley student, please call 781-283-3333 as soon
as possible to set up an account on Wellesley College's e-mail
and networking system.
| 8:30-9:00 | Classwork with Laura Rigge |
| 9:00-9:40 | Classwork with Weiner |
| 9:40-10:00 | Break |
| 10:00-11:10 | Classwork with Weiner |
| 11:10-11:30 | Break |
| 11:30-12:40 | Classwork with Weiner |
| 12:40-1:40 | Weiner has office hours |
1:40-2:40 |
Laura has office hours |
Last Modified: October 31, 2012