Read the instructions below carefully. Failure to observe instructions will jeopardize your application or may cause cancellation of your enrollment. The link to the electronic form is at the bottom of the page.

Course proposals are due by the first day of class (September 15th for Fall Semester, and January 28 for Spring Semester).

1. These courses are not "regular" language courses. They are paid from a special budget and are offered only after approval of course proposals. Therefore the course proposal is not simply "routine," but is an essential part of the process.

2. Because the courses are paid from a special budget, the process of approvals and of required signatures is of special importance. If you skip any of the necessary steps, you risk having your application denied and/or your enrollment cancelled. Each semester there are up to two dozen students studying as many as a dozen languages with a dozen different faculty and instructors. This situation makes communication difficult in the best of circumstances. We simply cannot spend the time to chase down students who do not follow instructions.

3. These courses are available for credit only, no auditors.

4. These courses are offered only as "tutorials." Whether they are individual or group tutorials, they are still individually arranged each semester according to student interest and available resources. Therefore, none of them is guaranteed.

You must submit your course proposal in time for necessary arrangements to be made and for you to receive written approval of your proposal. If you do not hear back that your proposal is approved, do not assume that everything is all right. It is your responsibility to follow up on your proposal (as described below).

5. No tutorials will be approved for courses that duplicate existing regular course offerings. (For example, a spring tutorial request for a course that is regularly offered in the fall will not be approved.)

6. These courses are not part of faculty and instructors' regular responsibilities. Most instructors are delighted to teach them, but as tutorials they place much of the responsibility for course content and progress on the student. If you are not prepared to be committed to this course and put in the necessary time and effort, do not apply.

7. Please note that courses of this type will not suit everyone, but this is the only form in which these particular courses are offered at Harvard. If these courses do not meet your needs you should explore other programs or perhaps consider private instruction.

8. The courses Cr, Dr, Er, Gr, 91r, and 120r are graded courses. Slavic 301 is pass-fail.

9. Applications for Slavic Cr, Dr, Er, Gr, 91r, 120r, and 301 are to be submitted electronically through the department website.

Do not speak to individual faculty before submitting your proposal! There will be time to speak to individual faculty if it is possible to consider your proposal for enrollment.

COURSE PROPOSAL

1. A course proposal is required because the course you are proposing to take is not a "regular" language course. In other courses your instructor probably identified the goals and objectives of the course, selected materials, established a schedule for covering the selected topics, chose or created supplementary materials, corrected homework, designed quizzes and exams, etc. In this course many of these tasks will be your responsibility, with the instructor acting as monitor and tutor. Depending on student interest in this language/level, this course will function as an independent study or small group tutorial, according to the structure described below.

2. In the appropriate spaces on the attached form or (preferably) retyped on a separate piece of paper, provide the requested information.

Fill out all of these sections thoughtfully. The purpose of the course proposal is not simply to describe what you want to do. It is an important opportunity to demonstrate that you know what it means to learn a language for special purposes, to take significant responsibility for organizing your language study, and to prepare to continue to learn on your own after this tutorial has ended. These tutorials are brief; how will you make the very most of the limited time available?

Goals: It is your responsibility to consider and articulate reasonable goals for your progress during the semester. Goals must be more specific than "improve my language ability"; explain in detail why you need to study this language, what you will be doing with it, and what specific content you expect to be dealing with.

Textbooks: It is your responsibility to review text materials which might be suitable for your purposes. You may wish to speak to your instructor for help with this selection, but you should be prepared to evaluate a textbook for your own specific purposes. You should suggest the kind of grammar, vocabulary, or other work which you would find most useful.

If you have not studied this language it is still your responsibility to see what might be available. Visit Widener, Schoenhof's, and look at internet sites. See what is available and consider to what extent the materials you find correspond to your needs.

Readings: It is your responsibility to suggest possible readings for this course. Note that simple "conversation practice" is insufficient for these tutorials. You must anticipate a program of content reading, at a minimum with proposals for topic areas. You may have specific selections in mind, or authors, or periodicals, or types of articles or selections (and possible sources), which may or may not be adopted by your instructor. In many cases you will be asked to provide a portion of the texts for all students in the course to read.

Even at the beginning level you will begin to read as soon as possible. Consider what kind of reading would be the most useful to you. Your instructor may make other suggestions, but in any case it will be important to understand what you would consider useful.

Class time: It is your responsibility to suggest how class time (2 separate meetings per week of one hour or more in length) might be used most productively. Think seriously about how you can best use class time vs. outside study time. Class time is very limited in these courses and much typical language coursework will be done outside of class. Needless to say, consistent serious preparation for all classes is essential.

Writing assignments: It is your responsibility to suggest the kinds of writing assignments that you would find useful, their length and frequency.

Topic focus: All proposals must have a topic focus or content area in which you would like to work this semester. For example, you might wish to read a particular author or authors, a particular genre, texts of or about an historical period, texts addressing a particular theme, contemporary issue, or cluster of related issues. At the beginning level you may be preparing for research in particular subject areas, for the practicalities of research abroad, and for communication with other scholars. In intermediate and advanced level courses you will be expected to complete a project within your topic area.

Evaluation: It is your responsibility to suggest how you would like your progress to be evaluated, whether by quizzes, graded writing assignments, graded oral presentations, and/or other means. In the case of quizzes, you may be asked to participate in their construction.

3. We will review all course proposals for a given language and level and may make adjustments and suggestions. When there are several proposals for a given language/level the instructor will have to consider ways in which the various proposals can be combined into one group tutorial. Both for instructional reasons and because only one course per language can be offered in each semester, certain adjustments to individual proposals are often required. All requirements articulated by your instructor must be fulfilled for satisfactory completion of the course.

4. You are required to submit a progress report at mid-semester (approx. November 15 or March 23) and a final evaluation on the last day of Reading Period. Progress reports must follow the format given here, either typed separately or directly on this form. The purpose of the mid-semester report is self-evaluation of your progress and suggestions for modification of your study program. The final report should be an effort to measure your accomplishment and make suggestions for future study. The mid-semester and final evaluations are required. You will not receive a grade for this course if either progress report is not submitted.

Slavic "R" Course Request Form