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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Word Order Patterns In The Writing Of Heritage And Second Language Learners Of Russian, Olesya Kisselev
Word Order Patterns In The Writing Of Heritage And Second Language Learners Of Russian, Olesya Kisselev
Russian Language Journal
Word Order (WO) variability is an important feature of the Russian language. Appropriate use of WO patterns makes a Russian text meaningful and coherent and has larger implications for the grammaticality of sentences and the ability of the language user to interpret and convey the meaning of the utterance. In the words of the late Olga Kagan, “every learner and teacher of Russian would agree that acquisition of native-like WO is one of the most challenging hurdles on the path to the higher levels of language performance” (Kagan and Dillion 2004, 89). Despite this widely shared opinion, little is known …
Teaching Compassion In The Russian Language And Literature Curriculum: An Essential Learning Outcome, Benjamin Rifkin
Teaching Compassion In The Russian Language And Literature Curriculum: An Essential Learning Outcome, Benjamin Rifkin
Russian Language Journal
One of Dr. Olga E. Kagan’s most important contributions to the language education field was a reconceptualization of the perspective of the language performance of heritage speakers of Russian. In the past, heritage speakers’ language was considered deficient in all the ways in which it diverged from Contemporary Standard Russian. Their lack of formal instruction in Russian or the interruption of their formal instruction due to their immigration from a Russophone country to North America was considered the source of numerous errors and anglicisms, which the Russian language curriculum was designed to eliminate. Teachers of Russian as a foreign language …
Our Russian Classrooms And Students: Who Is Choosing Russian, Why, And What Cultural Content Should We Offer Them?, Jason Merrill
Our Russian Classrooms And Students: Who Is Choosing Russian, Why, And What Cultural Content Should We Offer Them?, Jason Merrill
Russian Language Journal
Language instructors are well aware of the many challenges facing our profession. Financial pressures and fluctuating enrollments have caused many institutions to look critically at their language programs and curricula. Adding to these concerns is the lingering sentiment in some areas that foreign languages are not something that “you (really) need to know,” as Lawrence Summers stated in 2012 (Summers). Colleagues have produced impassioned defenses of the many benefits of language study (e.g. Geisler 2012), but ultimately we, as a profession, need to combine such efforts with the most effective and relevant language instruction we can provide. Geisler is not …
Adult Learners’ Perspectives On The Acquisition Of L2 Russian Pragmatic Competence, Victor Frank
Adult Learners’ Perspectives On The Acquisition Of L2 Russian Pragmatic Competence, Victor Frank
Russian Language Journal
Decades of research have highlighted the central role that instruction, interaction, and feedback play in the acquisition of a foreign or second language, whether in the classroom or in naturalistic contexts, particularly in the domain of interlanguage grammar. The role that these factors play in the acquisition of interlanguage pragmatics has come under rigorous investigation only in the last decade (Barron 2002). In this article, I will discuss the degree to which adult learners of Russian acquire native-‐‑like pragmatic competence, and present their own unique perspectives on its acquisition, both in the domestic classroom and during study abroad.
A Case Study Of The Acquisition Of Narration In Russian: At The Intersection Of Foreign Language Education, Applied Linguistics, And Second Language Acquisition, Benjamin Rifkin
Russian Language Journal
Studies of students’ foreign language proficiency—including Carroll (1967), Magnan (1986), and Thompson (1996)—have shown that students in their fourth year of language study typically demonstrate oral proficiency in the intermediate range. Thompson’s study found the median score of students’ oral proficiency in the fourth year to be at the intermediate high/advanced threshold, but her subjects at this level of instruction were students at Middlebury’s summer language program and were tested in the last week of the program. In my own teaching practice, I have found that most of the students majoring in Russian at the University of Wisconsin-‐‑Madison graduate with …
Assessing The Oral Proficiency Of Adult Learners, “Heritage” And “Native” Speakers Using The Ilr Descriptions And Actfl Proficiency Guidelines: Considering The Challenges, Cynthia L. Martin
Assessing The Oral Proficiency Of Adult Learners, “Heritage” And “Native” Speakers Using The Ilr Descriptions And Actfl Proficiency Guidelines: Considering The Challenges, Cynthia L. Martin
Russian Language Journal
The ILR Descriptions – Speaking and the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines – Speaking trace their genesis to an oral proficiency assessment system first developed at the Foreign Service Institute in the 1950s to assess “foreign language users’ abilities according to a consistent scale.” The original purpose was clearly aimed at assessing the abilities of non-‐‑native, non-‐‑heritage adult foreign language learners, and this genesis is still reflected in the current ILR Descriptions and the ACTFL Guidelines. However, tools based on these descriptions/guidelines are increasingly being used to assess the abilities of language users who are not what we would consider to be …
Language Matters: Some New Contributions From Sociology (Emanating From Richard Brecht’S Castle), John P. Robinson, William P. Rivers, Cynthia Costell, Jennifer Robinson
Language Matters: Some New Contributions From Sociology (Emanating From Richard Brecht’S Castle), John P. Robinson, William P. Rivers, Cynthia Costell, Jennifer Robinson
Russian Language Journal
As a result of the projects undertaken by the University of Maryland’s Center for the Advanced Study of Language, several new findings and insights have emerged from the highest quality data collections on Americans’ abilities in and attitudes toward foreign languages (FL). These involve the (now annual) language surveys conducted by the US Census Bureau and the bi-‐‑annual General Social Survey (GSS) conducted by the University of Chicago since 1972. The Census Bureau has been documenting foreign languages spoken at home and how well individuals can speak English in such households. The 2000-‐‑08 GSS has assessed whether adults can speak …
Introduction To Volume 55
Russian Language Journal
The present issue of RLJ reflects the new editorial board’s view of the state of Russian study in the U.S. and the world today in the context of globalization, internationalization of curriculum, and increased expectations regarding the outcomes of language study everywhere. (Verbitskaya) While more modest than the bold Soviet-era policy assertions concerning Russian as a “primary language of mass international communication,” Kostomarov addresses the new role of Russian as mother tongue, second language, or major foreign language for more than 300 million speakers in the world, nearly 3 million of whom are now resident in the United States, and …
Articulation: Challenges And Solutions, Martha G. Abbott
Articulation: Challenges And Solutions, Martha G. Abbott
Russian Language Journal
Providing students with a seamless progression of language development within the K-12 school curriculum remains a challenge for the foreign-language profession as we enter the new century. As national standards are developed for foreign-language education in the K-12 continuum and school districts throughout the country consider implementing foreign-language programs earlier in the curriculum, we have an opportunity to confront that challenge with renewed vigor.