Soviet, Russian, and American developments in intensive instruction : a movement towards practical application

Today, numerous universities around the world are struggling with ever growing financial limitations arising from the education market and governments that control educational funding. At the same time, despite increasingly limited finances, educators must offer the same high quality of instruction that they always have to ensure their students' success in the future while working with diminished resources and funds. Current pressure leads universities and foreign language educators to seek new ways to optimize education and learning. Intensive methods can be considered a part of a solution. The current paper will not focus on the effectiveness of intensive language programs, but rather on intensive language instruction and methodologies that have been developed and are in the process of continuous development as education changes. This paper will discuss intensive methods both in their theoretical framework and practical applications. As most of the methodologies used in intensive instruction were developed in the former Soviet Union and now in Russia, this paper will also focus on Soviet and Russian developments of teaching methodologies during the past century.