1st Edition

Russian as a Heritage Language From Research to Classroom Applications

Edited By Olesya Kisselev, Oksana Laleko, Irina Dubinina Copyright 2024
    290 Pages 29 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    290 Pages 29 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Russian as a Heritage Language: From Research to Classroom Applications brings together linguistically and pedagogically oriented research traditions in a comprehensive review of current Russian heritage language (HL) studies.

    Divided into three parts, the collection offers a variety of frameworks and approaches spanning research on HL speakers’ linguistic and pragmatic competence, literacy development, and sociocultural characteristics of Russian in diaspora. Presenting a wide range of new empirical findings, the volume explores topics at the forefront of HL studies, from assessment of HL learners’ linguistic competence and language attitudes to research on communities and institutional affordances impacting HL acquisition and maintenance. Each chapter connects current research with specific classroom applications, presenting Russian as a global language in various sociopolitical and majority-language contexts.

    Combining methodological rigor with theoretical insights across diverse areas of language study, Russian as a Heritage Language advances the field of HL pedagogy and serves as essential reading for HL educators and researchers as well as for linguists studying bilingualism.

    1 Russian as a heritage language in the 21st century: Bridging research in linguistics and pedagogy

    Olesya Kisselev, Oksana Laleko, and Irina Dubinina

     

    Part 1

    Understanding heritage Russian speakers’ linguistic and pragmatic competence

     

    2 Linguistic knowledge and proficiency assessment in heritage and L2 Russian: Classroom implications of experimental findings

    Tania Ionin and Tatiana Luchkina

     

    3 Phonetic production of Russian heritage speakers in Finland: Implications for college instruction

    Olga Nenonen and Anastasiia Sergeeva

     

    4 Forms of address in heritage Russian in Germany: Something to address in the classroom

    Olia Blacher and Bernhard Brehmer

     

    5 Pragmatics of requests in heritage Russian: Implications for the classroom

    Marina Avramenko and Natalia Meir

    Part 2

    Literacy development in heritage Russian learners

     

    6 Writing proficiency development in learners of Russian as a heritage language in the Netherlands: A longitudinal study

    Alla Peeters-Podgaevskaja

     

    7 Register variation in the writing of Russian heritage speakers in Israel

    Anna Kostina and Elitzur Bar-Asher Siegal

     

    8 What eye movements can tell us about reading in Russian as a heritage language: From the lab to the classroom

    Olga Parshina, Olesya Kisselev, and Irina Dubinina

     

    Part 3

    Russian in diaspora: Community schools and communities as ‘schools’

     

    9 Can translanguaging be a resource for teaching and learning Russian as a heritage language? Evidence from Cyprus, Estonia, and Sweden

    Svetlana Karpava, Natalia Ringblom, and Anastassia Zabrodskaja

     

    10 Past the second generation: Social, familial, and individual factors in maintaining Russian as a heritage language in Israel

    Marina Niznik

     

    11 Russian as a heritage language in Spain: Educational opportunities for language maintenance

    Olga Ivanova and Nina Kressova Iordanishvili

     

    12 The acquisition of Russian by multilingual children in Canada: Heritage language proficiency, language attitudes, and linguacultural exposure

    Veronika Makarova and Natalia Terekhova

     

    Afterword: Russian without borders

    Maria Polinsky

    Biography

    Olesya Kisselev is Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of South Carolina, USA. Kisselev’s research expertise lies in the areas of heritage and second language acquisition, language pedagogy and learner corpus research. Her scholarly contributions include research papers and book chapters on linguistic aspects of learner language varieties as well as on language pedagogy.

    Oksana Laleko is Associate Professor and Director of Linguistics at the State University of New York at New Paltz, USA, and a book reviews editor of the Heritage Language Journal. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on formal linguistic, cognitive, and sociolinguistic dimensions of heritage language bilingualism.

    Irina Dubinina is Professor of Russian and Director of the Russian Language Program in the Department of German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature at Brandeis University, USA. Her research focuses on pragmatics of heritage Russian and heritage language pedagogy, which are the topics of her recent publications. Dubinina is an experienced instructor of Russian as a second and a heritage language.