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Journal

Slavic Languages and Societies

2013

Russian

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Traditions And Transitions: Russian Language Teaching In The United States. In Celebration Of The Career Of Dr. Victorina Lefebvre, Jason Merrill, Lora Mjolsness Jan 2013

Traditions And Transitions: Russian Language Teaching In The United States. In Celebration Of The Career Of Dr. Victorina Lefebvre, Jason Merrill, Lora Mjolsness

Russian Language Journal

In May 2012, the University of California, Irvine’s Humanities Language Learning Program hosted a symposium entitled Traditions and Transitions: Russian Language Teaching in the United States. The primary impetus for the meeting was to celebrate the distinguished career of our colleague, Dr. Victorina Lefebvre, who taught Russian language courses at University of California, Irvine since 1984. Her retirement in June 2012 meant the symposium was an opportunity to recognize and thank her for her unflagging decades of hard work for UC Irvine’s students. Victorina Lefebvre, who trained in the USSR in mathematics and physics education (M.A.) and in psychology (Ph.D.), …


Hits And Misses In Teaching Russian In The Us: The Perspectives Of Instructors, Students, And Enrollment, Ludmila Isurin Jan 2013

Hits And Misses In Teaching Russian In The Us: The Perspectives Of Instructors, Students, And Enrollment, Ludmila Isurin

Russian Language Journal

In U.S. universities, interest in learning Russian as a foreign language has been relatively steady over the last 50 years. The so-called “Sputnik effect”―a surge of interest in the Russian language due to the launch of the first Soviet sputnik in 1957 and, as a result, the shocking revelation that the USSR might become a serious rival―is considered the beginning of a new era, during which Russian language programs were established at major American universities. The interest in learning Russian did not subside during Gorbachev’s Perestroika in the mid-1980s; neither did it weaken right after the collapse of the USSR …