Summer Web Courseware
(available only to current students of the Kathryn Wasserman Davis School of Russian)

Intensive Immersion Programs

Classes are taught in Russian, and students are expected to abide by the Language Pledge to speak only Russian, in and outside of class, throughout the session. Placement in a specific level is determined by language proficiency rather than by length of previous exposure to the language.

A summer at the Kathryn Wasserman Davis School of Russian is an intensive one by design. Students normally spend four hours per day in class and drill, in addition to laboratory and other homework. A student-teacher ratio of eight to one helps our students sustain the pace and meet the expectations of a challenging program.

At the beginning of the summer session, all students - except first-year students - take a series of tests in listening, reading, writing, oral proficiency and grammar. All students, including first-year students, take these test again in the last or next-to-last week of the summer program. This allows us to prepare individualized progress reports for each student on each of the five tests: it also helps us to monitor the effectiveness of our teaching at each level of the instruction.
(Note to teachers: We regret that these tests are not available for use at other institutions.)

Click here to see a table depicting the language gain for students in the 9-week language session and 6-week graduate program at the School of Russian in the summer of 2005. Test results for speaking (oral), listening, reading and writing are correlated with the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (www.actfl.org), with scores from 0 (novice) to 3 (superior), but are not official ratings. These ratings are advisory only in that they represent faculty members' evaluations of student performance on tests correlated with the guidelines. Grammar test results are based on a grammar test consisting of 100 points. Language gain for students in the 9-week session, as measured on all five tests, is typically greater than the language gain of students who go to Russia for a summer program, and oftentimes greater than the language gain of students who go to Russia for an entire semester.

Middlebury School of Russian students often report that they feel that they learned more Russian in a summer at Middlebury than they did on a semester abroad program in Russia following their summer at Middlebury. Students in the 6-week program make gains in their language skills, but also learn a great deal about Russian history, literature, film, and so forth (the content of the graduate courses they take while here.) Gain in content area expertise is not assessed by the Davis School of Russian administration, but rather by individual faculty members in the context of the papers and exams students write for each course.

Select either Language Session or Graduate Studies for a more detailed description of the curricula.

Go to Heritage Speakers Program for a description of a proposed, three-week program designed for native speakers of Russian.

See Language Schools Information for details about: Calendar and Fees; Other Academic Programs; Academic Policies; Residence Life and Extracurricular Activities; Facilities; Admissions and Financial Aid.