10 Students Take Private Slavic Course

Ten Harvard students are bypassing the first-year Russian language course offered by the University and taking instead a $200 private course in Cambridge.

The private course, taught by Alexander L. Lipson, assistant professor of Russian at M.I.T., began in February and will continue until reading period. Its total enrollment is 27.

When asked why he chose Lipson's course over the University's Slavic A, one student replied, "Other graduate students in my dorm warned me not to take Slavic A. I was told you may learn to write Russian, but not to speak it." Another student said he avoided the University course because he had heard that sections spend all their time "learning to get the accents right." A physics graduate student who had taken Slavic A pronounced it "time-consuming," "medleval," and "a cook-book course."

The enrollment in Slavic A has fallen from 250 last year to 180 this year, reported Tatiana Kosinski, lecturer on Slavic Languages and Literatures.

One of Lipson's pupils remarked that he is not taking the private course "to get away from Harvard" but because he had "heard it was terrific." He described it as "the best language course I've ever had."

The first lesson in Lipson's course concentrates on several Russian sentences that the students repeat in class. One of the sentence groups is a dialogue beginning, "Do you understand why the verb ends this way?" "No, I don't." "Well, let me see if I can help you."

When the students are fluent in the sentences, Lipson begins to explain the rules of grammar. "Once they have a feel of the language, they can more easily memorize the rules," he explained. "It's almost like learning the grammar of your own language."

Lipson emphasized yesterday the importance of conversation and "getting the students to speak up." Beginning with the third week of the course, no English is permitted in the classroom, and he often employs such devices as insulting or ridiculing his students to provoke them into responding in Russian. The classes usually end in a song-fest in Russian, with Lipson accompanying the students on the guitar.

The Chemistry Department paid some of its graduate students to take Lipson's course during the summers of 1958 and 1959, according to Edgar C. Woodbury, research fellow in Chemistry. Woodbury said the Department felt the private course was more valuable than the Summer School course.