This description applies to sections 101 and 102.

This is a TBA course. TBA means "time to be arranged" (to accommodate as many students as we can). We hold an organizational meeting for all TBA courses at the beginning of each semester. The time and place of the meeting are posted at our home page, russian.cornell.edu, a couple of weeks before each semester starts.

This course is very similar to 1125 in the fall. The only difference is that it is taught at a slightly more advanced level. Russian 1125 is not a prerequisite for taking this course: you can get a lot out of 1126 without taking 1125, but you may have to work a little harder.

When two sections of this course are taught, one is for native speakers of Russian, and the other one is for students who learned Russian as a foreign language. The assignments are different in length and complexity, but other than that, the two sections are taught the same way.

Materials

• Media reports, usually on current events, from Russian-language Web sites, to be posted on the course Syllabus page for each class.
  
• Any good Russian-English dictionary, such as the one by Kenneth Katzner, published by John Wiley and Sons (In The Store under several RussA courses).

Assignments
Read and translate a story (about half a printed page) that is assigned for every class. You may take notes, but this is not a requirement. You do not have to write your translation.

As you read the stories with a good dictionary, compile your own glossary of words and expressions that seem to be common, or difficult, or interesting, i.e. create your own personalized guide for reading Russian journalistic prose. Newspaper and Web style involves certain devices and vocabulary items that are not common in other written styles or in speech.

Your notes and glossaries are entirely for your own use. They will not be collected or checked by the teacher.

Google Translate and other AI translators

Automated translation of text by a computer program--once called machine translation--used to be a linguist's challenge and is now a reality, albeit seriously flawed, despite the recent advances in AI. However, comparing automatic English translations to the Russian originals may be a source of interesting linguistic observations, especially on syntax and vocabulary choice. Remember that the AI does not understand what it says, and if you rely entirely on its generated text, sometimes you may end up with egg on your face. And sometimes you speak a strange variety of English. We don't think you are cheating if you use AI; you may actually be learning more than you would learn doing the translation from scratch. But if you notice that without AI you are as helpless and lost as you were two weeks before, or that your classmates smile when they hear what you say in English, then you are not learning, and something needs to be changed. A meeting with your teacher about the intelligent use of machine translation may quickly correct the situation.

For example, some syntactic ambiguities are built into Russian grammar because of the flexible word order of Russian sentences. To some extent automatic translators, like human translators, can resolve them by looking at word endings. But when this fails, it fails miserably. Dick, who loves two women, would be happy to learn that this sentence: И Джейн любит Дик, и Джин любит Дик is AI-translated as "And Jane loves Dick, and Jean loves Dick," even though a human translator would probably not jump to that conclusion.

If most of your work in this course were reduced to reading the output from an automatic translator, you would be shortchanging yourself. But if you entirely avoided using these helpful tools you would be wasting the time that they can save you, and missing the insights into Russian syntax that they can offer if you use them intelligently.

Attendance
Regular attendance is very important in this class, both for the learning and for the grade. Missing more than three classes without a good reason will affect your grade. Always send the teacher an email if you cannot attend.

Tests
The final exam is a story to translate. You'll be allowed to use a dictionary and your own notes (but not a computer). No other tests.

Grading

• Homework and performance in class 50%
• Final exam 50%