(no subject)

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Does anyone know the textbook of choice for intro level Russian courses or intro level Mandarin chinese that they use at Yale? I'm going to be starting as a freshman there this fall for the class of 2010 (I can't wait!) but I wanted to look at the textbook ahead of time so that I can get familiar with what I'm going to be learning and how etc. Thanks!

xposted all over the place...

Comments

[ignite.livejournal.com]

wow you must have gone through one hell of an admissions process!

[frolicsome.livejournal.com]

Apparently it wasn't rigorous enough to weed out those who would contact LiveJournal for textbook information rather than their professors or the university bookstore.

[ignite.livejournal.com]

and you just know the intro to russian professor has already filed his requisition forms for 2010.

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for your incredibly relevant comment! See, there is that slight problem where we don't actually HAVE professors yet (we don't pick our classes until the first week there) and the university bookstore refuses to tell us unless we show proof that we are in the class. Sometimes bookstores have them out for the world to see, but the bookstore is in Connecticut and I'm in Florida. Whoops, guess I should have asked someone else.

Now does anyone else have anymore witty-yet-off-topic remarks about my acceptance to an ivy league university?

[litchick.livejournal.com]

Why don't you ask the bookstore?

(I don't mean to come off smarmy - but as a college student myself, I find that's the best place to find out what textbooks the college uses.)

E-mailing your professors might be a good idea too.

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

I don't have any professors yet, and the bookstore refuses to release that information without a class schedule (which I won't be getting until mid September)

[litchick.livejournal.com]

When I run into a problem like this, I contact the department - in your case, probably the foreign language department? I don't know - maybe Yale is big enough to have separate departments for Russian and Chinese. At any rate, the department secretary may be able to give you the names of the professors assigned to the intro classes, the textbooks, or both. Because, of course, SOMEBODY knows what's going on, they just don't want to tell the students, for some strange reason. This is very common at any university.

One of the biggest challenges, I find, is not the work, it's navigating the bureaucracy at a big university.

[cheetr.livejournal.com]

In agreement with litchick...I would contact:

E-mail: slavic.department@yale.edu

Senior Administrative Assistant:
Carole McNish, HGS 2703
Registrar:
Cheryl Morrison, HGS 2704

Street Address:
Slavic Languages & Literatures
2704 Hall of Graduate Studies
New Haven, CT 06520

Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 208236
New Haven, CT 06520-8236

Phone: (203)432-1300
FAX: (203) 432-0999

I just stole that from the Slavic Languages and lit page.

[cheetr.livejournal.com]

Also, my research shows that Julia Titus is a recurring instructor of first year russian.

[coldmacana.livejournal.com]

Titus contact info: http://www.yale.edu/slavic/faculty/titus.html

Also, it seems as thought her particular interest is educating Heritage-speakers (ie kids who have grown up around the language and know a ton of vocab but ain't got no grammar skills no how! :) ) -- so make sure you don't hastily purchase the textbook she refers to other places ("Russian for Bilinguals.")

Drop her an email. I doubt the fact that you want to prepare yourself will offend her...Worse case scenario is she completely ignores you.

[padruka1988.livejournal.com]

You're taking Russian for the very first time AT YALE? What the heck is wrong with you?? If I were you, I would devote the rest of my summer to learning as much Russian as you can.

And you must not realize how expensive college textbooks are, especially if you aren't sure you want to get into that language. Study Russian in the summer, go to your preview classes, and THEN decide whether or not you want to invest the money/time/energy into learning Russian (at Yale). The bookstore has good reason not to share that information with people - they end up buying a book for a class that they're sure they want to take, only to find out it's filled up or they hate the subject after a few weeks... And then they have to deal with book returns and so forth. Bad, bad, bad idea.

If I can give you a piece of advice, fellow Ivy Leaguer, you need to learn how to think outside of the box. Of course you don't have professors now - but they are THERE. You need to go to yale.edu and click around to find the departments. Coming here, or any other blog community for that matter, will not help you. As you enter college, you'll find that the answers aren't going to be right in front of you anymore, and you're going to actually have to work to find them. Good luck.

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

well it will be the first time taking it formally... i've been informally studying russian for about 2 years now lol. I'm already planning on devoting my summer to studying Russian, Chinese, and microeconomics. And I never said I wasn't sure if I was going to get into Russian... I'm fairly certain I will be taking it for as many years as I can ^_^

And yes, I've hunted around the website, and yes, I'm planning on speaking to professors. I just wanted to see if anyone in this community could tell me about the Russian program that Yale offers from their own experience.

What school do you go to?