Connectives such as "because" and "but" are crucial for signaling coherence relations in discourse. They contribute to a better reading comprehension and, thus, academic performance. The aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of connective development during teenage years by studying individual differences in…

In this study, we investigated crosslinguistic influence (CLI) at developmental stages of third language (L3) acquisition of English by Russian--Norwegian children (N = 31). We tested seven linguistic properties within three linguistic modules (morphology, syntax and syntax-semantics). We compared the L3 learners to Norwegian (N = 90) and Russian…

The present study explores the effects of distributed practice by extending this area of research to L2 learning from audiovisual input. A total of 96 L1 Russian elementary to advanced learners of English watched five episodes of captioned TV series under three viewing distribution conditions: longer spacing of viewing once per week; shorter…

Using newly available data from the Trajectories in Education and Careers Study, the first longitudinal study on a representative sample of high school students in Russia, we examined the importance of investments in human and cultural capital on students' mathematics and reading standardized examinations, as well as on the likelihood of…

This article investigates the intercultural competence and identities of undergraduate heritage language learners (HLLs) studying abroad under the auspices of the U.S. Flagship Program. Based on survey responses and interviews with HLLs from Flagship Programs across the country, the article aims to assess the preparation of HLLs for study abroad…

Morphophonological alternations can make target-like production of grammatical morphemes challenging due to changes in form depending on the phonological environment. This article explores the acquisition of morphophonological alternations involving the interacting patterns of vowel deletion and stress shift in Russian-speaking children (aged…

In this study, the authors evaluated the strengths and limitations of a self-assessment based on ACTFL Can-Do statements ("ACTFL," 2013]) as a tool for measuring linguistic gains over an internship abroad in Russia. They assessed its reliability, determined how its items mapped with the ACTFL scale, and measured the degree to which…

This study examines the development and evaluation of a bilingual Vocabulary Size Test (VST, Nation, 2006). A bilingual (English-Russian) test was developed and administered to 121 intermediate proficiency EFL learners (native speakers of Russian), alongside the original monolingual (English-only) version of the test. A comparison of the bilingual…

This study reports the results of an interpretation task that captures whether high proficiency heritage language (HL) learners of Russian converge with monolingual (L1) speakers or proficiency-matched foreign language (L2) learners in their interpretation of aspectual pairs and whether the absence of convergence arises in the lexical component of…

Discusses the Graded Objectives for Adults Learning (GOLF) Russian program. The aim of the GOLF program is to have four levels, with Level Four being considered equivalent to a good GCSE pass, at which stage students will have a good working knowledge of the language and a wide vocabulary. (CK)