Letters to the Editor

To the Editors:

Do you know of any colleges or universities in the U.S. that offer online Russian language programs for someone who does not happen to live near a university? I am thinking about something like an online correspondence course, with Skype or Webmeeting classrooms, where there was live teacher to student interaction.

Lisa Fortin
West Texas

Dear Lisa:

We asked around and were directed to Georgia Tech College (oscar.gatech.edu), for college aged students and older, and blendedschools.net, for K-12 courses.

In addition, for independent learners, there are countless online language learning resources, some of which include interaction with a teacher one-on-one. Try any of the following:

primelanguageservices.com
livemocha.com
busuu.com
italki.com
mangolanguages.com

THIS JUST IN

The final data are in for Russia’s 2010 Census. According to official data, published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Russia is the world’s eighth most populous country, with 142,857,000 souls. The average age is 39, up from 37.7 in 2002. There are currently 10.7 million more women than men, and the number of married couples is 33 million, although 13 percent of these are unregistered, or common-law marriages. Some 5.6 percent of those polled did not wish to specify their national identity, up from 3.7 percent in 2002. However, 80.9 percent of citizens polled identified themselves as Russian, up from 80.64 percent in 2002. The second largest national group is Tatar, at 3.87 percent, followed by Ukrainian (1.41 percent, down from 2.05 percent).