Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Program

Linguistics

Advisor

Alberta Gatti

Subject Categories

Applied Linguistics | First and Second Language Acquisition | Morphology | Russian Linguistics

Keywords

Russian, second language acquisition, morphosyntax, morpheme acquisition, Russian textbooks

Abstract

Previous research on English as a second language has established the linguistic phenomenon of the natural order of morpheme acquisition in which grammatical features are acquired by learners in a specific order. The acquisition of Russian morphosyntax as an L2 had not been established until Gor’s (2019) research. The present study employs Gor’s (2019) findings to examine whether the order in which five Russian morphosyntactic features—case, impersonal sentences, location-direction, aspect, verbs of motion (VoM)—are acquired is reflected in second-year Russian instructional materials by investigating three commonly used textbooks. The results reveal that (1) the documented order in which Russian morphosyntactic features are presented in second-year textbooks does not fully align with the order in which these features are naturally acquired. The dis-alignment arises within three features: impersonal sentences, location-direction, and aspect; (2) realistically, all five researched morphosyntactic features will not be fully acquired by a typical Russian learner during the second year of instruction. Consequently, instead of setting unreasonable expectations, instructors should keep exposing learners to these features in a cyclical manner and adjust their expectations to 50% accuracy for production.

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