A Russian dilemma

[mothwing]

I have a student I tutor who is difficult, mostly because she is homesick and really demotivated.

Homesick because she's from Siberia and she gets tearful whenever she talks about her home. Last time she was rendered incapable of participating in class for twenty minutes because she saw a map of Europe and the East lying about before class and spent five minutes looking at her former home, then sat there, brooding, sullen. She was so bubbly when she came in, and this is not the first time she said she'd remembered something from home and went quiet.

Demotivated because they're analysing poetry, and she can't be bothered because she doesn't see the point both of poetry, what the particular pieces I bring in are about (they're supposed to work with Romantic poetry, and the Golden Age poets are a good match for obvious reasons), and why analysis is a good idea.

Now I'm thinking about bringing in a few poems in Russian which deal with similar subject matter as the German poems we're doing in class. I'm not sure it's such a good idea because I don't want her to feel bad, obviously. Still, it'd be an excuse to pick a native speaker's brain on Pushkin in the original, and possibly even Achmatova, because she's obsessed with Stalin's Russia, although if anything is likely to depress her, this'd probably be most likely to.

Comments

[onthetide.livejournal.com]

It might be a comfort to her, though, to read her native writers. Plus it might get her more interested in poetry!

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought, and also it might be a good and motivating thing to actively incorporate her native language in class, too. it's so rare that that happens in German schools where speaking foreign languages other than languages that are considered hip often gives people a kind of outcast status.