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…

The majority of research that relates teacher characteristics to student learning in the university has come from Western universities. Using various methodologies, research continues to examine the characteristics of outstanding university teachers. Much of that research in the USA assesses faculty and student perspectives. However, there are…

Different morphological theories assign different status to parts of words, roots and affixes. Models range from accepting both bound roots and affixes to only assigning unit status to standalone words. Some questions that interest researchers are (1) What are the smallest morphological units, words or word parts? (2) How does frequency affect…

Language proficiency before school entry has proven to be a powerful predictor of literacy development. This longitudinal study examined how simultaneous exposure to two richly inflected languages from birth contributes to the development of language-related literacy precursors at preschool age compared to peers exposed to one language. The…

Today the scientific potential of any country, its science cadres, the volume and scale of the research being conducted, the number of science centers, the quality and subject matter of the research, the level of the material and technical equipment of its research laboratories, and other aspects constitute a most important factor in ensuring…

This study analyses Russian-speaking immigrant parents' beliefs and attitudes toward the education of their children in German and Israeli bilingual kindergartens. Why did the parents chose bilingual education? Which convergences and divergences exist in parents' beliefs, expectations and attitudes toward bilingual kindergartens in Germany and…

We examined how the semantics of causal expressions in Russian and English might differ and how these differences might lead to changes in the way second language learners understand causal expressions in their first language. According to the dynamics model of causation (Wolff, 2007), expressions of causation based on CAUSE verbs (make, force)…

This study examines the motion verb system of Bulgarian, focusing both on the structure of the Bulgarian motion verb itself, and on the information typically encoded in the Bulgarian verb of motion. It then compares the Bulgarian motion verb system with the motion verb systems of two other Slavic languages, Russian and Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian…

This dissertation offers a Cognitive Grammar-based approach to teaching cases to L2 German and Russian students and examines the impacts of various methods of case instruction in beginning German and Russian language classes. A CG-based explanation of cases was already proposed by some CG theorists (i.e., Langacker 1987, 1991; Smith 1987, Janda…

In response to Leaver, Rifkin, and Shekhtman (2004), Wong and VanPatten (2004) challenged instructors of Russian to present evidence for the claim that mechanical drills (Traditional Instruction) were necessary for second language learning, and to demonstrate empirically the claim that Processing Instruction would not be an effective intervention…

Between 1869 and 1905 the Russian chemist Dmitrii Mendeleev published several tables with different arrangements of the chemical elements. Four of these are compared with periodic tables by Russian scientists from 1934 and 1969. The difficulties caused by the lanthanoid elements are clearly seen in the table of 1905, which satisfactorily includes…

This study focused on the role of bilingual versus monolingual preschool education in the development of lexical knowledge in Russian (L1) and Hebrew (L2) among second-generation Russian-Hebrew speaking immigrants in Israel. The study was designed as a longitudinal and comparative study. The lexical knowledge of children was measured three times…

Heritage speakers (HSs) of Russian in the United States form a very complex and diverse group of learners. Research in heritage linguistics has examined key parameters of the HSs' oral production. Important work has been done in heritage language (HL) pragmatics, morphology, and lexicon. However, very few studies have been conducted to…

When power tests include a time limit, it is important to assess the possibility of "speededness" for examinees. Research on differential speededness in the past has included looking at gender and ethnic subgroups in the United States on paper and pencil tests. The needs of a global audience necessitated, and the availability of computer…

The purpose of this study was to explore word problems as a subject matter in mathematics textbook curricula. The motivation for the study derived from the following evidence: (a) American students find some word problems are more difficult than others (Garcia, Jimenez, & Hess, 2006; Riley & Green, 1988; Stern, 2001), and (b) one of the…