We had that, too, but it wasn't really clear cut. We also had a bunch in the middle, who, while they really did need to go through most of the 101 material, the

We had that, too, but it wasn't really clear cut. We also had a bunch in the middle, who, while they really did need to go through most of the 101 material, they also did their share of intimidating the fresh starters - probably more so than those who really knew the material, who mostly just skipped class. Since my university had large Korean and Chinese populations, it kind of struck me as parallel to the problems the Asian Studies department had weeding out native speakers looking for an easy A - it was hard to tell them from the kids who could speak but not write. Putting them in a separate section kept them from driving the class, and things went much smoother.