This commentary discusses Westergaard's (2021) keynote article, which presents a comprehensive model of first language (L1), second language (L2), and third language (L3) acquisition. The commentary presents evidence from a previous study of L3 learners that provides support for Westergaard's property-by-property transfer proposal. The commentary…

The author reflects on foreign-language learning by his EFL students as well as his own foreign-language learning. He concludes by musing on the possible and fantastical devastation on language-ability wrought by strokes.

Practically no one will dispute that the future of Russia depends on the successfulness of the multifaceted modernization of Russian society, a task that cannot be confined solely to the socioeconomic sphere. The most fundamental task is that of changing the societal system of values and institutions. If Russia is to modernize successfully, 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…

Teachers in complementary schools are often assumed to be using outmoded teaching strategies and an authoritarian approach to discipline. However, it is rare for mainstream teachers to have visited these community-run after-school or weekend classes, which remain on the margins of educational provision. This paper argues that complementary…

In this issue's "Ethical Challenges" column, commentators share their views of how evaluators might respond to specific problematic situations, linking their analyses to the principles and standards they believe are most relevant to the case. Not surprisingly, the perspectives that commentators offer are not always in agreement. When…

During the period of glasnost, between 1985 and 1990, all of Russian literature changed. After 60 years of division between official and unofficial, dissident and emigre, the publishing of Russian literature became unified. Censorship and government control practically disintegrated. Among the "new voices" in Russian literature is…

Russian Village Prose began in the 1950s with articles critical of the way collective farms were being managed and developed into an insider's view of rural life and a celebration of the values and rituals of traditional rural Russia. It represented a new approach to rural themes and characters and a return to literature of high aesthetic quality…

Uses several examples to show a strong connection between the notion of transitivity and Russian aspect. The notion of interplay of pragmatic and objective features of transitivity has often been implicitly in definitions of Russian aspect but never sufficiently clarified. (Author/BK)

Compares the use of English compound tenses and Russian tense-aspect combinations in English and Russian scientific writing. Concludes that to convey the proper meaning, English translations of Russian technical texts should contain more uses of the conditional or subjunctive than appear in the original. (EKN)

Uses six examples to substantiate the hypothesis that masculine root words in reference to males in Russian cover a broader semantic space than do feminine root words in reference to females. Women share in the same wide space only when implicitly included in a masculine root. (Author/BK)

Describes an adequate collocational dictionary for learners of Russian. Recommendations are made regarding what should and should not be included in a collocational dictionary, and a discussion looks at under which headwords collocations should be entered in the dictionary. (44 references) (GLR)

Discusses the evolution and use of verb prefixes in Russian. The prefixes are classified by semantic content with subclasses of variants and problem verbs also given. (EKN)

One in a series of articles relating major European languages to cultural traits or artifacts finds similarities in Russian and the "isba," a country cabin found mostly in the northern part of the country. (MSE)

Proposes a variation of the two-stem system of analyzing the Russian verb. The need for greater organization and systematization is stressed, as well as an increased focus on the great regularity of the Russian verb, and the relative simplicity of Russian verbal morphology. (SL)