Register and Genre in Course Design for Advanced Learners of Russian

Abstract: This article explores the possibility of combining in the same course heritage learners who are borderline or seminative speakers with advanced language learners of Russian. After providing typology of advanced language learners in Russian and establishing that register and genre can be the focal point of such a course, the article discusses the course design in terms of material selection in registers beyond the colloquial. Drawing on the systemic-functional approach, suggestions on teaching and learning strategies and on predominant modes of communication are offered. The article concludes that register and genre-based courses are beneficial for both heritage and advanced language learners in their use of Russian beyond the colloquial register. Key words: advanced language learners, course design, genre, heritage learners, register Language: Russian (ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) Introduction During the last decade there has been a significant shift in the composition of students taking less commonly taught languages (LCTL): A growing number of those students are classified as heritage.1 Consequently, heritage learners no longer present a challenge to only Spanish programs, as historically has been the norm, and these learners have stimulated new research to address the needs of the LCTL heritage learners in U.S. foreign language classrooms.2 Less attention, however, has been paid to the question of placement of various nontraditional groups of students who are somewhat similar to heritage learners in their advanced colloquial speaking and listening skills. The problem seems to be the opacity of the term heritage learner which, in turn, complicates language placement. For instance, according to Valdes (2005), in the foreign language field, the term heritage is used in the restricted sense of "home background" speakers (p. 412), that is, in reference to those learners of language who are raised in a home where a non-English language is spoken. In the field of second language acquisition (SLA), the term might indicate multicompetence of a language learner who has knowledge of and uses a second language (Cook, 1992, 2002). Yet in sociolinguistic terms, that very same heritage learner may be a speaker of the contact varieties of language.3 By examining different types of heritage and advanced language learners, I intend to show that several intersections between them allow their needs to be accommodated in a single course, specifically in Russian language programs. Today, Russian language programs, while experiencing an overall decline in enrollment numbers (Welles, 2004), have started to attract various groups of nontraditional students with advanced speaking and listening skills. To show some emerging trends and without any pretense at finality of the following classification, such learners can be divided into three very distinct groups. First, there are heritage learners who have a family background in which Russian is spoken and who, as Andrews (2001) puts it, "come in all stripes" (p. 520). Second, there is a growing number of students who are interested in continuing their study of Russian language and who come from the Baltic republics, Ukraine, Central Asia, and Central and East European countries of the former Soviet bloc. Granted, this group of language learners might be of a transient nature due to the waning influence of Russia in the postSoviet space; nevertheless, at this time, they form a very distinct group of speakers of the contact varieties of Russian. Third, there are nonheritage language learners who, after spending two or more years in Russia or another Russian-speaking country of the former Soviet Union on either religious missions or doing other work, return fluent in colloquial speech and listening, placing as high as the Advanced level on the ACTFL proficiency scale (ACTFL, 1999). In their speaking and listening fluency, some of the learners in this group are equal to or higher than heritage learners. …