Just for Dad - About our Classes

I hadn’t really realized until tonight when I spoke with my parents and Dad happened to ask “So do you guys go to school?” that I haven’t written about our classes or our school yet. I have been really caught up with all of the history and the sites here that I had completely forgotten. So this is for you Dad (I don’t enjoy school as much as the site seeing but I promise that I am attending actual classes here):
Firstly, when we arrived here (two days after we got here actually), we took a placement test at the school (the Smolny Institute of Russian Language and Culture) which placed us into various classes based on our level of knowledge in the language. Ross and I are both in the same class, which is made up of all Canadian students who have been studying Russian for 4-5 years.
SMI (an acronym for Mass Media), is taught to us by Mikhail Arkadyevich Krudyshev and is a course in which we read newspaper and other media articles. We are given these articles only in Russia, and we read them in class and for the most difficult words and phrases our teacher will translate them into English for us (Mikhail Arkadyevich’s English is really good). So far we have read two articles, one about the fears which Russians have, and another on what is most important to Russians. I find this class, and this teacher the most interesting, because we learn about the modern views of the Russian people, and also because Mikhail gives us great personal insight into the culture of Russia. He tells us many little anecdotes: about how you could determine which vodkas to purchase in the former Soviet Union, about what the laws are for drinking in public, about the current healthcare system here, how the city is still very inaccessible for people with physical disabilities. . . in general he has, apart from instructing us on current events, given us a lot of practical insights into Russia.
Grammar is taught to us by Marina Vadimovna Kuznetsova who is very sweet and has also given us tips on how to prevent our things from being stolen on the metro, etc. In her class we practice the strict rules of the Russian language. In Russian verbs are conjugated differently depending on who/what you are talking about. Ex. In English I would say: I like to swim. You like to swim. They like to swim. But in Russian the verb to swim is pronounced plavat – but to say I swim you would use plavau, you swim: plavaesh, they swim plavayot (sorry difficult to explain). The same is true for nouns and adjectives as well, the endings on words change in 6 different ways depending on how you are using them (this is called Cases, depending on what case you use, the ending of a word will change, and there are different endings within each case for masculine words, feminine words, neutral words, and plural words). Enough of that technical talk. Essentially we learn how to form sentences in Russian in the proper way – it’s complicated.
Conversation, is what we need the most help in, and is taught to us by Nina Petrovna Koloyartseva. She is a very interesting older woman, who tells us stories of what it was like to live through the Blockade of Leningrad during WWII. She has been teaching at our school for 52 years! She has seen so much history during these years too, she was born when this city was Leningrad, lived through WWII, lived through the reign of Stalin all the way up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and now lives in the new Russia which must seem so opposite to what her country looked like before. At any rate, in her class we practice speaking Russian by chatting about various topics. We have chatted about movies and she taught us specific phrases and questions to use for; we talked about the city of St. Petersburg and our cities in Canada and asked questions about their sites, their industries, their populations, etc.; we have also covered other things, like how to greet people and how to give complements, etc. etc. It is a bit difficult to absorb, but luckily we don’t cover too much too fast, it seems that she understands that if we repeat things for a few classes in a row, then it will become easier for us to remember them.
Literature, which we only have once a week (Grammar and Conversation we have 3 times a week, because they are the most important), is taught to us by Anastasia Sergeievna Grosheva and as you may have guessed, in her class we read Russian literature. Short stories, and poems; so far only a short story by Bunin and a poem by Alexander Blok. We read these in Russian, and then try to talk about the themes, symbols and such of them. This is rather difficult since we have never done this before in Russian and our vocabulary is a bit limited in this area, but our teacher seems to be fairly forgiving and generally gets the idea of what we are trying to say, even if we can’t quite get it out using the proper grammar.
Phonetics, which we also have once a week, is taught to us by Marina Alexandrova Ivanova. In this class, she teaches us the proper way to pronounce Russian words and phrases, and usually we read things to her and she will correct our pronunciation, or she will ask us questions and we will try to answer as best we can, and again she will tell us what we are saying wrong. This course is a little more difficult for us I think partly because our teacher at home was very forgiving about our pronunciation so we have developed a few bad habits I think. We have been saying many words in the wrong way for the last few years and it is a bit tricky to re-learn them.
Lastly, we are also taking a Film Course. Our teacher is Alexander (I can never remember his patronymic name, which is bad and I will explain later) Victorov and in his class we watch short film segments and then talk about them. We discuss the things the characters say, the subtle cultural things, and what we like about the movie etc. . . Again this is a course where we are made to practice speaking (which all our teachers agree is the area where we have the most room to improve). It is nice though, because we are learning some more colloquial expressions from the movies and from Alexander himself. He too, like some of our other teachers tells us great stories about what life was like in the Soviet Union in comparison to today, and talks to us about how regular Russians speak and think.
Patronymic Names: In Russia, a person’s second name, unlike our middle names, is not just a second given name that their parents have choosen for them. Instead they have what is called a patronymic name, which essentially tells people what their father’s name was. So using our teachers for example Mikhail Arkadyevich’s father was called Arkady . . . Marina Alexandrovna’s father was Alexander and so on. When we are in class, and in general when someone is addressing someone of authority or with politeness, they will call the person by their first name and their patronymic name, this is why it is bad that I have forgotten Alexander’s patronymic name. I would never want to call him only Alexander because it would be disrespectful. Someday soon I will simply have to apologize and ask him to repeat it for me, or spell it for me.

Love from Leah and Ross too (I seem to be monopolizing the posts lately)