In 2016, I decided to embark on the journey of a linguist and a teacher of English as a foreign language in Russia. Since then linguistics and language teaching have been an integral part of getting to know myself better, exploration, self-discovery, and therapy (in a way.) As I was born in Russia and raised in the United States I have had a unique opportunity to acquire both English and Russian simultaneously. I remember vividly how languages fascinated me as a child and I wanted to learn any language I heard other people speak. As I was learning about languages in a more nuanced and “technical” way, I was able to see the diversity of voices often seen as “non-standard” or “incorrect” as type of a norm rather than irregularity. Recently, I realized that I use “non-standard” language in my classes, especially when I use songs and explain grammar or pronunciation features. At the beginning of my ELT career, I would have never used descriptive grammar in class and would spread the idea of nativespeakerism to my learners. But as languages evolve, so do responsible and informed educators. In my undergraduate linguistics and graduate LTS classes, I was able to reshape my perception of a language, break down some preconceived notions and misconceptions, and become accepting of language variations. But some changes in the language, for example, Newspeak in Russian (novoyaz) concern me as a linguist and teacher as it promotes false perception of reality.
Conversation Club for Ukrainian Refugees as Part of Formal Learning (3).pdfIn my LT 534 Language Learning in Context class, I worked on analyzing the context of teaching English as a Second Language to displaced persons from Ukraine living in the United States. I interviewed my former student from Samantha Smith’s Group — an NGO that provides online language classes and conversation club sessions free of charge to displaced persons from Ukraine. I asked my interviewee about motivation, error correction, and language learning. Based on the results of the open-ended survey and observations, I could confirm that instrumental motivation is prevalent in the context and that classroom instruction could benefit learners (Kotov, 2023). The main question that is still left for discussion is how to bring students to integrative motivation for learning a second language and whether it could be achieved. The potential benefits of learning a language in the classroom would be a sense of community of like-minded people who share, in our case, trauma, and similar experiences. Vygotsky (1978) in his proposed Sociocultural Theory of Second Language Acquisition stated that the culture of the speakers influences their cognition.
For my LT 544 Second Language Acquisition class, I worked on a final presentation called “Humor, Fun, and Language Play.” I decided to work on this project as it aligns with Vygotsky’s (1978) Sociocultural Theory where play is seen as a vital element of learning. Language play and humor in our case demonstrate linguistic diversity. Students need to be exposed to different varieties of language use and be able to experiment with what they learn. Cazden (1978) suggested including humor and language play in education, but these ideas have been seen as “either not important enough or too idiosyncratic to be deemed worthy of instruction.” Bell and Pomerantz (2014) also emphasized the significance of incorporating playful instances of linguistic forms and patterns that “break a particular rule.” They argue that such examples are essential for helping learners recognize that these deviations are a typical and regular aspect of the language. When I teach languages I try to include as many elements of language play and humor as possible though I must say that it is a rather challenging task since these features are highly influenced by the cultures and languages and may not be relevant to students. In the presentation, I also included practical implications and demonstrated examples of humor and language play in ESL and Russian classrooms. I also indicated a need for professional development of language educators in both the languages they teach — to learn more about humor and language play and then how to teach these features to students.
Classroom Activity 1 (3).pdfIn LT 538 Design for Language Learning Pragmatics, Nessie Kurganova and I, developed a lesson plan for teaching Russian greetings. We used the IPIC Model for Language Learning (Sykes et al., 2020) to build on students’ knowledge of greetings and develop subjectivity and awareness. We especially focused on +/- distance and +/- power. We emphasized the importance of moving away from describing the language in simple terms such as “formal” or “informal” and being aware that a language is more complex and dependent on the context. We also added that for using greetings in Russian, learners should be aware of - severity (e.g., talking with a friend) and + severity (e.g., addressing a professor). Nessie and I developed a set of activities to use in class as a pragmatics component. While developing the lesson plan we focused on providing authentic-like tasks to learners so they can apply their knowledge outside of class. We also wanted to make sure that students would become aware of the choices they can make based on the context and who they interact with as just learning a language is not enough to get the full picture.
For my LT 520 Language, Mind, and Society class, I wrote a final paper on Russian Newspeak (novoyaz) to analyze how language shapes the perception of the war in Ukraine in Russia among speakers of Russian. In the paper, I go over the history of Newspeak which first emerged in George Orwell’s 1984 up to the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. When analyzing this context, I stated that it is important to use Critical Discourse Analysis (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000) as many words and phrases such as “special military operation” instead of war and “nazis” when referring to Ukrainians are introduced by the Russian government and state-owned media to build the distorted perception of the war. Mythology and propaganda help the Russian government create a space for genocide and condone and promote diminishing vocabulary to be used among people in Russia. In the paper, I also included the discussion of V and Z symbols that are actively being used in everyday lives in Russia which were introduced by Russian officials and state-owned media however they deny any links to creating symbols. I argue that such symbols are empty signifiers (Laclau, 1996) thus on purpose can be interpreted differently by the speakers of the language.
Newspeak Final Paper (2).pdf
(c) Ekaterina Burvikova, UNH
In May 2023, I gave a lecture on Russian Newspeak to the students of Russian at the University of New Hampshire at Durham. In my presentation, I talked about the history of Newspeak and also included interactive activities on how Russian Newspeak works, and students were able to create their words and phrases following a model.
I am also thrilled to announce that I will be teaching RUSS 525 Russia: Mythology and Propaganda class at the University of New Hampshire at Durham starting in Fall 2024!
References
Bell, N. & Pomerantz, A. (2014). Reconsidering language teaching through a focus on humor. E-JournALL, 1(1).
Blommaert, J., & Bulcaen, C. (2000). Critical Discourse Analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, 447–466. http://www.jstor.org/stable/223428
Cazden, C. (1974). Play with language and metalinguistic awareness: One dimension of language experience. International Journal of Early Childhood, 6(1), 12–24.
Kotov, A. (2023). Conversation Club for Ukrainian Refugees as Part of Formal Learning [Unpublished Manuscript], Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon, p. 1.
Laclau, E. (1996). Emancipation(s). Verso.
Orwell, G. (2021). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Penguin Classics.
Sykes, J., Malone, M., Forrest, L., Sağdıç, A., & Kang, O. (2020). Affordances of digital simulations to measure communicative success. Transdisciplinary innovations for communicative success. In M. Peters M., & R. Heraud (Eds.). Encyclopedia of Educational Innovation. Springer. doi, 10, 978-981.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.