Same rollercoaster - different operator

My class has a new teacher. She is very different from our last one which is both good and not so good.

Good: she will not accept "нет" or "да" as an answer she wants complete sentences first thing in the morning as well as walking out the door at the end of the day. Whether or not you know the word you want to say does not matter.

Also good: we spend part of our day holding (or trying to hold) a conversation with her. At times we need help. Pretty much all the time. Sometimes it's funny because she just feeds us a word at a time either because we got an ending wrong or it is a new word for us. When we get to the end of the sentence she says "Now repeat." Like we are supposed to remember it! This feeding us and our regurgitating it goes on until we can make the sentence unassisted. We are a patient group. She sometimes is. Sometimes she'll take one of our sentences and play "The House the Jack Built" with it. For instance. "I read a good book last night" will become "I read a good, long book last night at 8:00". This will go on untile we are reading a good, long, fiction book last night while laying in bed listening to the crickets chirping and mating. It's like awaiting execution when you realize you are the last in line.

She corrects our tests swiftly and goes over what we missed, she took some sentences from me that were not assigned and not only corrected them but typed them up for me. Very helpful.

Not so good. She seems bewildered that we do not recall every word that has passed our ears and eyes. "We just had that!" she will say referring to one of the words of a two-page dialogue we read earlier. I think she gets frustrated but does not show it. "Please remember." She will say. I used a new verb conjugation this morning. "Now, will you remember?" she asked. "I'll try." I answered honestly. She looked so disappointed. It's really funny. I have to keep a lid on the sass.

She gives us a LOT of homework. (so did our last teacher - coincidence? I think not.) We knock ourselves out doing it and she (so far) has not been too interested in it after assigning it. One day I specifically asked her for priorities in our assignment; what will we do in class Monday? She told us that we would do our narratives. I spent a good deal of the weekend memorizing and practicing delivering my narrative (poor Douglas). It's Wednesday and she still hasn't asked for it. Yesterday, she prioritized our homework 1,2,3 . . . This morning we did #7, 10 and one that wasn't even part of the assignment.

It's surprising that I am keeping a good attitude throughout all this. I figure this is all part of moving forward and building on what we know instead of waiting for everything to be solid. The institute has a fabulous reputation for turning out good speakers of languages. The Russian departmens specifically gets much praise and respect. So I'm trusting it.

I think of when I taught piano. I realize that I used some of these techniques with my students. The good and the not so good. I remember playing a game with students where I would play a note or two (depending on their level) and have them play it back. If they did it correctly I'd add a note or two to that. We'd go on until they couldn't remember. It was fun. (For me anyway.) Sometimes I would show up for a lesson with a piece I wanted the student to learn. "But I didn't practice that!" They'd worry. I told them that I knew that it was a new piece. I assured them that there were no new notes, just the same notes in a different order. I did that because I knew they could do it. I'm wondering if that is the motivation behind the way these classes catapult forward every day.

This last paragraph is purely for sympathy so you may skip it if you can't stomach it. This week we have 91 new vocabulary words to learn and 17 phrases (some of which use words NOT on our vocabulary list). In addition to that, we have lists of words from the reading portion of our day which I just found out they actually expect us to learn!!!! You may be laughing at me but we are talking about apx. 50 words PER DAY. Does anyone out there besides me think that humanly impossible?