Thread: Online course material at Princeton

http://www.princeton.edu/russian/SLA101/

Dear All,
I've been following discussions on this forum for a few months and found that it is probably the best site for people who want to learn Russian. Thanks to all who have kept this forum lively. I've also been learning Russian for about 3 months and believe I am making some progress, albeit slowly.

Wonder if any of you have tried the course material which is provided at the above site? I think this was recommended by our MasterAdmin.

I find the materials contained therein pretty comprehensive. Am wondering if it is legal to just use the said course material. If it is, could we perhaps form some sort of an 'online class' with the material. Perhaps some senior forum members may like to volunteer as online tutors??

Very, very basic, but not bad at all for an internet course. Of course, any course that teaches водка but not вода can't really be taken seriously.

I think it is not really that basic after all. If fact it is actually meant for classroom use, with the guidance of a teacher/lecturer. There are 3 folders, SLA101, SLA105 and SLA207.

SLA101 is for beginners till intemediate. There are 12 chapters in this course and almost 100 lessons with lots of grammer and practice exercises. The SLA101 folder seems pretty complete. The problem is that the answers to the exercises are not available. Hopefully it will become available later. Thus, if there is a moderator for this "class" it would be real interesting.

SLA105 and SLA207 I think are for post graduate study in Russian at Princeton U. Currently those are much too advanced for me.

I am not sure if the said materials for the Russian course will be available for long or if it is meant for public use.

Dude, not to be an elitist bastard or anything, but if 105 is post grad work, I won't be applying to Princeton for grad school. After two-and-a-half years of undergrad work here in Madison, I can understand and easily respond to every word of the lessons I listened to from that folder, and I'm not even one of the top students in my class.

I've studied Russian for 7/8 months, and I can understand everything as well. The songs are nice though. @Pravit: you can even download Я спросил у ясения.

Why do they teach beginners such useless words as "fool", "jerk", "vodka" and a whole bunch of phrases (Ты слепая, что ли?) that will make you sound rude in the least? As if these are the most important words to know. Well, may be for a hippie professor they are

Kind of reminds me how in 9th grade they tried to get us to like Shakespeare by telling us his plays had sex jokes in them.

Thanks for the response guys. So it's not as good as I think it is. However, I still find it useful and will continue using it until I find something really wrong with it.

It seems the Penguin's New Russian Course is the material to use for learning Russian. Find it a little dry though especially the pronounciation part as there is no audio with the book.

Since it is so highly recommended, could we maybe start a discussion group based on the Penguin book for newbies to the Russian language? Wonder if there are others who are interested? What do you all think?

Discussion group with voice chat?

Originally Posted by johnbigg

Since it is so highly recommended, could we maybe start a discussion group based on the Penguin book for newbies to the Russian language? Wonder if there are others who are interested? What do you all think?

It's a good idea, but everyone should have a book first

We could all discuss a new Russian grammar/verb/excersise book every six months. It would be like Oprah's Book Club only with Russian material!

I note that there is already a thread on the Penguin Russian Course. Should we follow on that thread or would it be better if we started a new thread for all those who owns or intends to own the book in the near future?

I am very keen to have a sort of online 'course' going where we can have 'assignments' based on a common study material. Of course there would be many different levels of proficiency among us, but I'm sure this can be sorted out. And if Penguin is the best material for this purpose then we can let everyone on this forum know about this and get their response too.

I believe there have been many such request as to how best to study Russian, especially for beginners. This may not be the best approach for everybody, but this way our interest and motivation can be assisted along the way. I have also noticed on this forum that there are many dedicated members who have shared and helped others in need willingly. I am hoping that this 'course' can get the interested and assistance of these members.

Presuming this a good thing, is there a proper way to make such announcement?

Thanks again for the feedback.

Don't you think there will be problems with copyright and stuff?

How would there be copyright issues? I don't think we will be copying lessons from the book directly into the forum. Most likely, we would just be making up our own lessons based on what we know, and have others do them, or, in a better idea, have someone who actually speaks Russian make us a little lesson, if they would be so kind.

theres only copywrite issues if one of us starts copying whole chapters of the book, and claiming that he or she wrote it themselves.

Hee, remember MY lesson learning thing? It flopped Everyone stopped doing the lessons. Perhaps if more people did it this time...

Hi Pravit,
Please, please, would you start these lessons again. If we announce a couple of times and give it a little time, there will definitely be more response.

If we can start a list of people who are interested in this lessons based on a common study material, then we'll know if there is enough to start the class.

If you do start the class again, please count me in. Also, is there anything I can do on my end to assist?

Thank you.

Wow! That was one of the more polite posts I have seen in quite a long time. Thank you(several flashing green plus signs appear over my head). For that I will try to be as polite and non-sarcastic as possible.

The people that I remember that were doing it were Vbouldr(don't think he has time for MR anymore, got a job), truelovewaits(also doesn't have a lot of time, got a job), and TronDD(dissappeared). I would be glad to continue where we left off. We were reading a short children's story online, with the lessons being comprised of vocabulary lists and quizzes to check comprehension.

You could certainly assist by participating often in the class,meaning you ask questions(on the forum preferrably, but you can IM me) if you don't understand, try to help anyone else also doing the class(even if you're wrong, it's good experience to help others), etc. etc. I need to see posts from people on a fairly regular basis to know that I'm not writing all the lessons for nothing.

Give me a moment and I will dig up the link so you can have a look at what it was, but I don't know if we want to keep using that one or start out fresh. I think we'd best start out fresh, as if anyone wants to do the class, they won't have read up to that point.
EDIT: Here's the link http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewtopic.php?t=1223
Wow, I seem a lot more spunky and less mean back in the day.

However, I think it would also be a great idea to start a class based on the Penguin Russian course. I don't have it, but I'm sure someone else(ahem, Jasper) with some experience could lead it. I could just pop in occasionally to make sarcastic comments

I'd be honoré. But I don't know if I have the time to help others (god I'm mean), because I've got some Russian and Chinese ( ) studying to do myself as well. And homework. And a job. And fencing. And working out.

Oooh, fencing, eh? Damn decadent bourgeoise pasttime.... What kind of job do you have?

You could certainly help just by stopping by every now and then and making comments on whatever they're doing.