The present study examined the proposal that the presence of a similar morpheme in the learner's first and second languages (L2) facilitates morphological development in the L2. Advanced Russian and Japanese speakers of English as a second language performed a self-paced reading task in which they read English sentences word by word for…

This study investigates how accurate one item writer can be on item difficulty estimates and whether factors affecting item writer judgments correspond to predictors of actual item difficulty. The items were based on conversational dialogs (presented as videos online) that focus on pragmatic functions. Thirty-five 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-year learners…

This article examines the linguistic landscape (LL) of seven villages above the Arctic Circle, in the region called North Calotte. The area forms a complex nexus of contested and changing multilingualism, particularly as regards to endangered indigenous Sami languages and Kven and Meankieli minority languages. Viewing LL as a discursively…

It is acknowledged that the value of reading has gone down in today's Russian society, and this is rated as unequivocally negative. Instead of "the most well-read country in the world," Russia is now called a "society of TV viewers" by the some observers; it is not a nation of independent thinkers but passive objects of the…

This paper examines the impact of task complexity on L2 production. The study increases task complexity by progressively removing pre-task planning time and increasing the number of elements. The combined effects of manipulating these two variables of task complexity simultaneously are also analyzed. Using a repeated measures design, 42…

The current research investigated the acquisition of the copula "be" in Present Simple Tense (PST) in English by native speakers of Russian. The aim of the study was to determine whether or not Russian students with different levels of English proficiency would encounter any problems while using the copula "be" in PST in English. The study also…

This study describes how intermediate-level first language English readers of Russian as a second language deploy lexical inferencing and other strategies when reading informational texts. Fifth-semester students of Russian performed think-alouds while reading two texts; one written for the general adult reader, and the other meant for school-age…

This study presents a comparative analysis of the clausal architecture and sentential negation in East (Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian), West, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Upper and Lower Sorbian), and South (Bulgarian, Macedonian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, and Slovenian) languages. Using the Minimalist Program, I analyze the syntactic structure…

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…

This study demonstrates the understandings that result from teachers' explanations of how they learn when they encounter everyday situations that evoke their learning. The study renders these explanations as a framework for further research on teacher workplace learning in informal settings. The framework emerged from a constant-comparative…

In this narrative inquiry, I explored the role of language in the lives of six Russian-speaking immigrant teachers. Theoretical perspectives emphasized experience, context, and culture in understanding their beliefs, and language served as an interpretive lens through which the experiences were explored. The inquiry revealed the following…

This article presents the findings of a study conducted at five Finnish business schools in 2009. The aim of the study was to provide a broad picture of different aspects connected with language education at universities. After an overview of the situation of language studies in Finnish business education, the results are presented of the analysis…

This project investigates whether learners of Russian perceive the sociocultural weight of the two personal pronouns for "you", "ty" (informal/intimate) and "vy" (formal/polite) when they listen to native speech. Research on address pronoun use shows it to be an important sociocultural variable and, while there is some general consistency in use,…

The article focuses on bilingual kindergartens in Germany and Israel offering education in both host (German or Hebrew) and immigrant (Russian) languages. The main questions are how teachers of bilingual kindergartens understand and explain the organizational and pedagogical principles of the kindergartens and how they negotiate home and host…

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…