Why I Teach: Nellie Terlemezian

From Russia With Prepositions, Conjugations—and Love

Nellie Terlemezian, NYU-SCPS adjunct assistant professor of Russian, taught a writer of Russian descent who wanted to know the language before traveling to, and writing about, Russia.

She taught an orchestra conductor, a Tchaikovsky enthusiast, who thought knowing Russian would deepen his understanding of the music.

In fact, if you ask Terlemezian about all the students to whom she’s taught Russian since she began at NYU-SCPS in 1971, their stories might fill another volume of War and Peace.

“I really love teaching,” she says. “I love interacting with people. And when I see a student doing well—you know, I feel really proud!”

Terlemezian’s enthusiasm and dedication inform her work, leading to positive classroom results and an NYU-SCPS Teaching Excellence Award, bestowed this spring.

Though she earned her Ph.D. in “Methods of Teaching Languages” at Moscow’s Pushkin School, many of Terlemezian’s teaching techniques have been developed while working at NYU-SCPS. One example is the way Terlemezian teaches grammar. It’s daunting in Russian, she explains. “You’ve got genders with six conjugations and noun endings that change; even the prepositions have different endings.” Russian grammar is hard for nonnatives to master.

But one day Terlemezian observed a Japanese colleague working with a chart—something like a multiplication table—to help navigate between Japanese and English. “I thought that would work for Russian, too,” she observed.

Terlemezian then created what some of her students call her “Magic Chart.” It may not make the verbs, nouns, and prepositions as easy to appreciate as, say, Beluga caviar or blintzes, but her students give her high marks for streamlining the learning process.

In fact, Terlemezian’s students eagerly look forward to their classes, despite the challenges of learning the language, says Milena Savova, academic director of the Department of Foreign Languages, Translation, and Interpreting.

“Nellie has a great retention record,” says Savova. “Her students historically continue to return to take the next level of a course. She started teaching just to Level II, but students kept wanting more. Now Nellie’s up to Level VII.”

Born in Armenia, which was then part of the Soviet Union, Terlemezian grew up knowing both Russian and Armenian. But she appreciates what a challenge it is to master a complex foreign language, especially for older learners.

“If students don’t see progress, they can quickly become disillusioned,” notes Terlemezian. She entices them with generous portions of the national literature and culture, including samples of Tolstoy and Chekhov. Recently, she took one class to the Russian clubs of Brighton Beach in Brooklyn where they experienced the culture firsthand and practiced their fluency in a fun, relaxed way.

It’s all part of making the study of an intimidating language a little less daunting—and keeping her students coming back for more.