A significant body of literacy and language research over the last two decades has been informed by a sociocultural perspective and an associated qualitative design, which are often seen as valuable and appropriate for researching literacy. As an emergent researcher, whose understanding of language education was mostly informed by individualistic…

Article surveys the special theories and empirical studies of language acquisition carried out by Soviet psychologists, especially in the period since 1950. The basic principles of materialism, historicism and social reference characteristic of Soviet Marxist psychology are placed in contrast to certain current tendencies in American linguistics.…

Arguing that all language is communication, but very little communication is language, this paper explores questions of method and evidence in the human science practice of communicology. The first part of the paper analyzes the dialectical question of methodology in which method as procedure is implicated with thought (logos) as judgment per se,…

The four issues of this journal published in 1991 contain the following articles: "Suggestology in the USSR"; "Integrated Short-term Intensive Course Structure; "Teaching Teachers to Teach"; "Sociopsychological Aspects of Intensive Teaching"; "The Method of Intensive Learning in the Context of Modern…

This publication discusses the use of intensive teaching methods for language instruction, also known as suggestopedia ("suggestopaedy"). The theory of suggestopedia, various methods developed from the theory, and their applications are described. A description of Lozanov's suggestopedic method precedes a discussion about the various…

The study provides a description of the verbal derivational suffixation, postinflectional derivation, enclitics, and particles of the Central Siberian Yupik Eskimo language as spoken on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska and on the coast of Chukotka, in the Soviet Union. It also shows how these elements participate in a network of four tightly-knit…

Although spoken language was the subject of attention among Soviet linguists for a short period in the 1920s, it has not attracted much attention since then. The main concern of Soviet linguists has been the forms of written language. Only at the end of the 1960s did linguists begin to record spontaneous speech on tape and study its forms. The…

Four working papers from the 1992 Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota session, are presented. The first, "English Borrowing in Thai as Reflected in Thai Journalistic Texts," by James Kapper, looks at patterns of the influence of the English language on Thai. It is concluded that English has permeated Thai culture…

In Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, foreign language tests have been used rarely in schools, because more traditional oral and written examinations are preferred. However, recent changes in socialist pedagogical theory support a trend toward increasing efficiency in the instructional process, increased use of diagnostics, development of more…

A study examines the dynamics of cultural pluralism and language in the ethnic mobilization, and resulting dissolution, of the USSR. It first examines ethnic composition, dominant nationalities, language groups without separate nationalities, patterns of ethnic populations within nationalities, and the influence of this multiculturalism on…

A discussion of bilingualism in young children in the Soviet Union looks at the three main forms of early bilingualism (bilingual home environment, different languages spoken at home and in school, and second language instruction in school), notes the challenges they pose for development and maintenance of bilingual skills, and then describes a…

Eighteen papers, 11 in English, and 6 in Finnish and 1 in German are presented on the general theme "Language--Knowledge and Skill," a theme that emphasizes the need to examine the communicative goal in foreign language education from the perspective of both theory and practice. The English-language articles on foreign language testing,…