I’m rather curious as to what people here consider likely.
Most likely: experience with Russian itself or a related language (e.g. Ukrainian).
(If it’s the former, there must be some reason why he’s in your intro class. Aside from deliberate sandbagging, it could be something like having been exposed to Russian as a child, but then not using it for a while. As for the latter, that happened when I took Russian in high school for 4 years—we had a Ukrainian speaker who had a very easy time but still had to learn the differences.)
Not very likely: innate language acquisition talent. Those guys exist (e.g. UN translators who speak N different languages fluently and can pick up new ones rapidly), they just aren’t common.
Most likely: experience with Russian itself or a related language (e.g. Ukrainian).
(If it’s the former, there must be some reason why he’s in your intro class. Aside from deliberate sandbagging, it could be something like having been exposed to Russian as a child, but then not using it for a while. As for the latter, that happened when I took Russian in high school for 4 years—we had a Ukrainian speaker who had a very easy time but still had to learn the differences.)
Not very likely: innate language acquisition talent. Those guys exist (e.g. UN translators who speak N different languages fluently and can pick up new ones rapidly), they just aren’t common.
Extremely unlikely: magical studying tricks.