Authors

Natalia V. Parker¹;  ¹ University of Leeds, UK

Discussion

The complexities of Russian grammar system have been actively investigated in linguistics for a number of decades, with several theories posited to explain the underlying principles of rich morphology. At the same time, inflection remains one of the most challenging features for second language learners to acquire, particularly for speakers of languages that have no or limited inflectional morphology (Slabakova, 2008, 2013). This paper analyses two opposite approaches to case inflection in Russian, syntactic and semantic from the angle of teaching Russian to English speakers, with the aim of proposing an original methodology for teaching Russian cases to foreign learners.

The new methodology is based on the cognitive principles of Spiral Curriculum (2009/1961) put forward by Jerome Bruner, an American psychologist and educationalist, as well as employing functionalist approaches to grammar and connectionist models of morphology acquisition. This paper illustrated the main differences between spiralling and the existing teaching approaches, namely paradigmatic and communicative.

My project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, develops and tests this methodology in the context of teaching Russian cases to ab-initio students, focusing on the acquisition of inflection within learners’ speech (rather than on knowledge of grammar rules).


This methodology has the potential to make teaching Russian to English speakers much more effective and impact on the training of thousands of students worldwide, thus improving the standard of learning within higher education and promoting the study of Russian language. Moreover, it could be replicated for teaching other morphologically rich grammars.