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…

The researcher examined 54 oral proficiency interviews (OPIs) with L2 Russian speakers ranging from Intermediate High through Superior (predominantly Advanced Mid) for narrative as defined by Labov. Descriptors adapted from episodic analysis were also used. While the author found that OPIs provided relatively weak prompts for narrative, Superior…

We studied the relationship between rapid serial naming (RSN) and orthographic processing in Russian, an asymmetrically transparent orthography. Ninety-six students (M age = 13.73) completed tests of word and pseudoword reading fluency, spelling, orthographic choice, phonological choice, phoneme awareness (PA), and RSN. PA was a better predictor…

Traditional rhetoric attempts to find the available means of persuasion in public assemblies, law courts and ceremonials and is grounded in cultural values and beliefs. Traditional rhetoric supports the development of social communities and posits education as a primary means of maintaining these communities. In contrast, contemporary alternatives…

I examined the nature of morphological decomposition in a series of masked-priming experiments with Russian prefixed nouns. In Experiments 1A and 1B, I tested 3 types of prime-target pairs in which the prime was a morphologically simple word, and a facilitation was found when the prime and the target were truly morphologically related (e.g.,…

This article describes the results of an epidemiological study of developmental language disorder (DLD) in an isolated rural Russian population. We report an atypically high prevalence of DLD across all age groups when contrasted with a comparison population. The results are corroborated by a set of comparisons of school-aged children from the…

Although the number of multilingual qualitative research studies appears to be growing, investigations concerned with methodological issues arising from the use of several languages within a single research are still very scarce. Most of these seem to deal exclusively with issues related to the use of interpreters and translators in qualitative…

Russia's secondary school populations are becoming increasingly diverse in terms of ethnicity, culture, language, and religion. The growing diversity makes a considerable impact on the functions and goals of schools, the realization of which requires the implementation of an equitable language policy. In this article, I briefly represent Russia as…

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 article considers the potential role of private institutions in the development of Russian higher education. After decades of a government centralised higher education system, there is a clear trend towards the privatisation of education institutions and the diversification of education practices. Some commentators consider this to indicate…

In this paper, we try to unravel some of the unintended and intended academic effects associated with post-Soviet educational reforms by focusing on three cases: Estonia, Latvia and Russia. We have chosen this comparison because a unique "natural experiment" in the three countries allows us to compare the changing academic performance on…

This regional dossier aims to provide a concise, description and basic statistics about minority language education in a specific region of Europe. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements, and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects, such as the…

The public has always had a keen interest in textbooks on history. Despite all the differences among textbooks on national histories, most countries have a similar focus: the task of shaping the new generations' positive image of their own people in its long or short history, while not disregarding any sinister, dark, at times frightful pages of…

In this commentary, the author stresses that reading habits in Russia have changed since the Soviet era, and the more intellectual journals and magazines in particular have lost their importance. Audiences for books and magazines have fragmented, and there are fewer sources of commonly shared information and ideas than was true a few decades ago.…

Subtractive bilingualism is widespread throughout Siberia, with indigenous youth often more proficient in Russian than in their non-Russian local languages. Siberia's national schools, which are secondary schools offering instruction in local languages of Russia, provide critical institutional support for minority languages. The goal of this…