The research on language dynamics in the context of migration and integration has been dominated by applied linguists and educators, who described and measured native language attrition and emerging bilingualism among immigrants and their children. In parallel, sociolinguists discussed the role of language ideology/policy of the host society and…

Self-development is a crucial aspect of language teaching as it fosters various dimensions of language teacher cognition, affect, and identity, ultimately contributing to better learning outcomes. Most studies on language teacher self-development have examined language teachers' cognitive, affective, and identity-related reactions to particular…

The Imperfect/Preterite aspectual contrast is one of the most studied topics in Spanish as a second language research. However, there are few works focused on describing the acquisition of modal uses of the Imperfect by L2 speakers. This paper investigates the L1 Russian L2 Spanish speakers' mastery of politeness, evidential and nonfactual modal…

To teach English as a second foreign language at university levels provides the educator or professor an excellent occasion to compare the first and second languages by a series of analogical activities that not only highlight the similar forms and structures of them, but more important still, oblige students to comprehend these forms and…

The present project is a research-based and practice-tested online synchronous curriculum for English language learners with the Russian language mother tongue. The curriculum's theoretical component is grounded in Vygotsky's, Leont'ev', and Engestrom's "Cultural Historical Activity Theory" as well as in scholarly papers on the influence…

Foreign language anxiety (FLA), whose impact is often negative on learners' cognitive processing, happens when a learner pursues a foreign language as a non-native speaker. This study aimed to investigate anxiety in learning English as a foreign language and its influence on learners' cognitive processes. The sample comprised graduate and…

This article argues that multilingual locales with minority, national and global languages at hand can become a site where meaning of social experience is negotiated and contested, and the role of minority languages can be reconceptualized. More specifically, using the example of Tatar, a minority language in Russia, as well as the framework…

The role of context in cloze tests has long been seen as both a benefit as well as a complication in their usefulness as a measure of second language comprehension (Brown, 2013). Passage cohesion, in particular, would seem to have a relevant and important effect on the degree to which cloze items function and the interpretability of performances…

Some children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate unusual islets of abilities or "splinter skills" that represent relative strengths in their development. In this paper we present a clinical case of an 11-year-old Russian boy with ASD who spontaneously acquired the English language. While the child demonstrated language…

Language education and schooling are important topics in post-conflict contexts. This study explores the existing situation of mother tongue education in the de facto Abkhazia. The study had the following research questions: (1) What was the ethnic composition of Abkhazia during the Soviet Union, and how Russian occupation changed it? (2) How well…

The present study explores the effects of distributed practice by extending this area of research to L2 learning from audiovisual input. A total of 96 L1 Russian elementary to advanced learners of English watched five episodes of captioned TV series under three viewing distribution conditions: longer spacing of viewing once per week; shorter…

This article analyses discussions in the Russian media of the proposal to introduce the Unified State Exam (USE) in English as a mandatory test in the last year of (high) school education 2010s. The decision not to implement the mandatory USE in English was taken in August 2020. In the aftermath of the decision, we investigate the decade-long…

In this study, we investigated crosslinguistic influence (CLI) at developmental stages of third language (L3) acquisition of English by Russian--Norwegian children (N = 31). We tested seven linguistic properties within three linguistic modules (morphology, syntax and syntax-semantics). We compared the L3 learners to Norwegian (N = 90) and Russian…

Studying language learning beliefs plays an important role in language learning research. The aim of our study was to reconstruct the system of meanings that underlie the gender differences in the beliefs about people involved in foreign language learning. In our study, we used the semantic differential to study beliefs about people involved in…

In the current conditions of globalization and the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF), the notions of pragmatic competence and appropriateness as well as pragmatic failure become of paramount importance to the language learners and instructors. The current article discusses these questions through an approximate replication of Jaworski's…