Technology is changing education. Just 30 years ago, instructors were using slow, inefficient technology such as projectors and reels of film, whereas today they have instant access to video from anywhere in the world. This capability has the potential to change the way that language is being taught and learned. Instead of students relying solely on their teacher and textbook for linguistic input, they have access to the Internet which holds a seemingly endless amount of information. This study was inspired by the belief that it is possible to maximize the potential benefit from that availability by implementing the theory that people learn language best when they have access to comprehensible input (Buri, 2012; Crossley, Allen, & McNamara, 2012; Krashen, 1985; Shintani, 2012; Zarei & Rashvand 2011). It also implements the belief of some second-language acquisitions theorists that subtitled video provides language learners with more comprehensible input than non-subtitled video alone (Borrás & Lafayette, 1994; Chun & Plass, 1996; Danan, 2004; Di Carlo, 1994). Thus, this study used interactive subtitled video to investigate the effects of three word definition types on participants' vocabulary comprehension and involved the selection of 120 Russian (L2)words of equal difficulty that were randomly sorted into one of four groups -- three treatments and a control group. Each treatment group contained 30 Russian words with a different type of definition in English (L1): dictionary definitions, which provided the viewers with the definition they would find in the bilingual dictionary; glosses which provided the viewers with the exact meaning of the word only as it pertains to the given context; and annotations which provided an explanation to clarify a word's use in different contexts or its non-traditional uses. Participants totaled 53 men and women ages 18-30 from 4 countries, US, Canada, Germany, and Sweden, who were advanced L2 learners of Russian. To control for the possible effects of a pretest, some of the subjects took a vocabulary pretest, and then all subjects watched a film in Russian with Russian subtitles, which was immediately followed by a vocabulary posttest. Results showed that annotations were most conducive to vocabulary gains, followed by glosses, dictionary definitions, and no definition, respectively. Although this was not the case for all participants, this outcome did hold for the majority, and several possible reasons for this outcome are discussed.

The present study was designed to understand the retrospective account of the learning experience of four successful learners of Russian who made substantial oral gains as measured by the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) during a semester study abroad (SA) program in Moscow, Russia. Each participant made as much as two sublevels' improvement on the ACTFL scale, even those who began with Advanced level proficiency. Specifically, the study examines what students believe, how they exercise their agency, cope with constraints, and take advantage of affordances in out-of-class contexts. The qualitative data includes semi-structured interviews while quantitative data consists of pre- and post-program OPI scores. This research addresses the question of second language learning in a foreign language immersion program through thick description and through cross-case analyses. Findings were interpreted in relation to van Lier's theory of the ecology of language learning (2004) and the notion of affordances which suggests that if learners are proactive and outgoing (or initiate interactions) they will perceive language affordances as valuable and will use them. This theoretical approach provides a means to understand how most students were able to improve in oral performance while lacking meaningful contact with native speakers (NSs) or struggling to make friends with them. Regardless of the difficulties encountered during their time in Russia, students exercised their agency through participating in more self-initiated non-interactive activities without being directed by others. Each of the students perceived the meaning of his or her learning experience in a different way, demonstrating how the SA experience is highly individualized. This study argues that regardless of students' individual differences, they have one key principle in common: autonomous behavior. Further research is needed to investigate what fosters learners' autonomy and contributes to learners' self-efficacy.

Целью данной работы является многоаспектное изучение функционирования концепта счастье в сознании носителей языка. Объектом исследования является смысловое поле концепта счастье в русском языке, а предметом работы – исследование структуры значения концепта счастье с точки зрения различных подходов (когнитивного, психолингвистического, метафорического). / The aim of this work is a multifaceted study of the functioning of the concept happiness in the minds of native speakers. The object of the study is the semantic field of the concept happiness in Russian language, the subject is the research of the structure of the concept’s meaning in terms of different approaches (cognitive, psycholinguistic, metaphoric).

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No / The status and understanding of marketing in the USSR and post-Soviet Russia are tracked over a 40-year period, making extensive use of Russian-language sources. In the late Soviet period marketing is seen as a Western business system that was not applicable to an economy based on extreme centralisation and state-inspired conditions of shortage. With the collapse of communism, marketing is variously seen as still not quite suitable for Russian conditions, as a sales support activity or as a branch of public relations. At the same time great confusion arises over the nature of marketing owing to the problems of converting Western marketing terms into Russian, for which there are often no equivalents. Translations of Western marketing textbooks reveal translators' unabated struggles with marketing terminology and the unsatisfactory results. Literal translations, where possible, or direct transliteration into Russian merely add to the confusion. It is argued that this state of affairs is symptomatic of a wider unease about the market economy and scepticism about its relevance for Russia.

The Army has approximately 2000 soldiers on active duty trained to be Russian linguists for duties as intelligence specialists. To maintain this group, 1100 to 1300 candidates are sent annually to the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, California, for an intensive 47 week basic Russian language course. Attrition rates for this course have been averaging a relatively high 20-30% for many years and studies have shown skills achieved at DLI decline rapidly after course completion. In addition, of those candidates completing this course, only 40-60% achieve the desired skill level 2 (of 5) upon graduation. In 1986-87, the Army collected data on a number of individual characteristics of soldiers going through four basic language courses (Spanish, German, Russian & Korean) for a four year longitudinal study to try to improve this situation. This research examined data for the Russian language students in listening skills for the DLI basic course through Advanced Individual Training (AIT), or approximately the first two years, to determine variables that might improve prediction for the selection of successful Russian linguists. The criterion variables were the scores achieved on the Defense Language Proficiency Test III (DLPT) listening section at the completion of DLI and during the follow-on training at AIT. Predictor data collected at the beginning and during DLI included variables on cognitive, personality (e.g., empathy), motivation/learning strategy and biographical (e.g., gender) characteristics. This study examines 23 variables in multiple regression and discriminant analyses to determine predictors or predictor combinations for success in second language learning. This effort was supplemented by a qualitative analysis based primarily on 36 interviews with Army Russian linguists in field assignments. Findings indicated improvements may be possible in the prediction of successful Russian linguist candidates by using additional screening instruments prior to assignments to DLI. For success on the DLPT at the end of DLI, the use of instruments to measure study habits, motivation, verbal ability, critical thinking, self confidence and prior language experience provided an increase over the Army's current baseline (predictor set Multiple R = .509 vs baseline = .359). For AIT, the Army's current predictor variables did not show up in the final equation. Again, an increase in predictive power was demonstrated with study habits, verbal ability, critical thinking, self confidence and ambiguity tolerance variables in the final equation (predictor set Multiple R = .516 vs baseline = .244). Additional insights were provided from the analysis of information gathered during interview sessions with Army Russian linguists in field assignments. / Ph. D.

The aim of this dissertation is to describe the sphere of use of the Russian Instrumental case in written sources from the eighteenth century. The research is based on approximately 11,300 instances of the use of the Instrumental and almost 2,400 constructions with other cases, excerpted from documents of various genres and styles. The corpus includes texts written by forty eighteenth-century authors, and contains works of poetry and drama, literary prose, letters, memoirs and learned tracts. Previous studies of the Instrumental case have in the main dealt with the development of the system of its meanings in the Old Russian period, or else have described its condition in modern times. The present work attempts to systematise its most typical uses and to trace the changes in the function of the Instrumental that took place during the period when a national literary language was coming into being in Russia. The research is primarily focused on the competition between the Instrumental case and other means of expression of particular meanings. In particular it describes (with statistical data) the variation in case forms within the predicate, with the function of an object, and also of the agent in passive constructions. A detailed description is given of those meanings of the Instrumental which are known from the earliest period and still in active use in the eighteenth century, but nowadays perceived as archaic. The most important of these are the Instrumental of cause, and also various uses of the Instrumental without a preposition to indicate time or place.

O presente estudo busca entender como se apresentam e se relacionam os estados afetivos e motivacionais dos alunos ingressos e egressos do nível de graduação do curso de língua russa da USP. Para tanto, a pesquisa utiliza-se de enfoque teórico e metodológico que engloba fatores tanto da Psicologia Social quanto da Psicologia Educacional. A análise dos resultados sugere a mudança destes estados afetivos no contato com as diferentes situações de aprendizagem a que são expostos. / The research aims to understand foreign language students\' affective and motivational situation. The participants of the research have a higher level of education and they studied Russian as a foreign language. For the purpose mentioned above we have applied the educational psychological and the social psychologycal theories and a mixed methodology. The results suggest that initial motivation changes over time as students has been exposed to different language learning contexts, as classes, groups, professors, materials, etc.

This thesis is a contribution to a growing field of studies on the reception of Byzantine culture in Russia. The object of investigation is the history of the Church Slavonic translation of the Cherubika, which constitute one of the most ancient and dogmatically important functional genres of Byzantine liturgical hymns. The chronological frame of this study is the 13th–17th century. Particular attention is focused on the last change in the liturgical texts in Muscovite Russia, in the mid-17th century. This liturgical reform, which led to the famous Schism in the Russian Church, is studied as part of the cultural reforms started by Tsar Alexis Romanov (1645-1676). The most characteristic feature of Orthodoxy is the principal unity of Scripture and Tradition, which in a hermeneutical perspective means the inseparability of text and context. The semiotic and interdisciplinary approach used in this study reflects this principle. The Slavic Cherubika are interpreted in a broad cultural perspective, and Church Slavonic translations are studied in the proper theological, rhetorical and linguistic contexts. Although the 17th-century translations made in Moscow were based on late Greek and South Slavic sources, they reconstruct the original dogmatic message of the Byzantine Cherubika and are hence closer to the Tradition than earlier Slavonic translations. This study offers a new interpretation of the nature of the Schism. It is shown that the main cause of the controversy between Reformists and Old Believers lies in their different understandings of the connection between Text and Ritual. The traditional medieval interpretation of the Cherubika is influenced by certain iconographical themes, other liturgical texts and the priest’s actions during the liturgy. The transition from a liturgocentric interpretation of sacral texts to a descriptive theological interpretation was a break from the characteristic Russian form of liturgocentrism and the beginning of a new cultural era.

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