Editors' Foreword
Olga Kagan, Director, and Kathleen Dillon, Associate Director, National Heritage Language Resource Center, UCLA/UC Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching
It is with particular pleasure that we publish this guest-edited issue of the Heritage Language Journal, devoted to the linguistic and pedagogical features of Russian as a heritage language. This area is of special interest to the editors as both of us have taught Russian and have conducted research on heritage learners using data from Russian heritage speakers.
We are grateful to David Andrews (Georgetown University) for editing this issue with extraordinary care. As David explains in his introduction, the six papers in the volume range from linguistic to psycholinguistic to pedagogical topics. In the past 15 years instructors of Russian have been challenged to determine the needs of heritage speakers of Russian and develop appropriate curricula for teaching them. We hope that Russian instructors at all levels will likewise find insights in this issue of the HLJ that will help them understand their heritage students.
In his introduction, David Andrews mentions a need to understand exactly who Russian heritage learners are. An on-line Survey of Heritage Language Learners is being conducted by the Heritage Language Resource Center. Preliminary results have allowed us to create profiles of Russian heritage speakers, and we hope that readers of this issue will consider contributing to the survey. A report of survey results collected so far is available here. The survey is ongoing, and we hope that instructors of heritage speakers will administer it to their students. Information on the survey and how to take it can be found here.
We would like to take this opportunity to mention the publication of a new volume of interdisciplinary articles on heritage education (New York: Routledge, November 2007). The volume spans a range of languages and has two papers dedicated to Russian heritage learners. A paperback edition will be published in the fall of 2008.
Another special issue of HLJ is in preparation. It is dedicated to Korean heritage learners, and the guest-editors are Jin Sook Lee (University of California, Santa Barbara), and Sarah Shin (University of Maryland, Baltimore County).