Research on multilingualism in the home has approached the family as a fixed unit thus neglecting the dynamic view of the family and its intersection with family language practices. The present study aims to address this gap by focusing on Russian-speaking mothers in Finland who have raised their children bilingually in single-parent as well as in…

The current study builds an argument for using Vygotskian "perezhivanie" as a theoretical perspective to explore the becoming and being of family language policy (FLP). We shift the focus from the three components constituting FLP -- language beliefs or ideologies, language practices, and language planning or management -- to the…

Despite the high number of recognised Indigenous groups who are struggling to maintain their languages, cultures, and identities in Russia, there is little research done on the matters of cultural and linguistic revitalisation. This study sought to address this gap by exploring the views of two Indigenous groups, Karelian and Mari, on the…

Research on first language (L1) reading has long since established the link between the proficiency of the reader and their efficiency in oculomotor control. More proficient readers make longer saccades and land closer to the word's center, which is a word's optimal viewing position, and make fewer refixations. Eye-tracking studies of second…

This study examines the role of cross-linguistic transfer versus general processing strategy in two groups of heritage speakers (n = 28 per group) with the same heritage language -- Russian -- and typologically different dominant languages: English and Estonian. A group of homeland Russian speakers (n = 36) is tested to provide baseline…

The ability to express oneself clearly in both a mother tongue and a foreign language is a foundation principle of the new national curriculum in Estonia. Therefore, research was conducted to determine whether there was a possible relationship between English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' perceptions of effective teaching and the…

This study investigated the effect of the first language (L1) on the visual word recognition of inflected nouns in second language (L2) Finnish by native Russian and Chinese speakers. Case inflection is common in Russian and in Finnish but nonexistent in Chinese. Several models have been posited to describe L2 morphological processing. The unified…

Knowledge of derivational morphology is considered an important aspect of vocabulary knowledge both in L1 (mother tongue) and L2 (second or foreign language) English language learning. However, it is still not clear whether different derivational affixes vary in their (learning) difficulty. The present study examines whether Bauer and Nation's…

Growth modeling was applied to monolingual (N = 26) and bilingual (N = 28) word learning from 14 to 36 months. Level and growth rate of vocabulary were lower for Finnish-Russian bilinguals than for Finnish monolinguals. Processing of Finnish speech sounds at 7 but not at 11 months predicted level, but not growth rate of vocabulary in both Finnish…

Ethnic identification is closely tied to language. Society's appreciation of one's first language and the opportunity to use it may help strengthen ethnic identification. This research examined the relationship between ethnic identifications and school language and investigated other factors that potentially impact language-minority students'…

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…

Social psychologists have suggested that language-based ideologies related to "stereotype threat" (i.e. variations in performance-based on ability perceptions of language groups) may affect students' academic achievement regardless of school language support. However, it is unclear whether efforts to support students' first language…

This dissertation is focused on analyzing phonological contact between Slavic and non-Slavic languages in southeastern and northeastern Europe, with the particular goal of describing how the social context of language contact interacts with linguistic factors to shape the outcome of contact-induced change. On the basis of case studies drawn from…