Are they still Russian-speaking? Comparing the heritage learners of Russian in non-formal frameworks in Israel and Italy

The paper presents the results of a field study conducted in Israel and Italy in 2014. The aim of the study was to investigate the process of language acquisition by children from Russian-speaking families who enrolled in non-formal Russian educational networks. Fifty-seven adolescents from Israel and 45 adolescents from Italy aged 8-15 participated in the study. All of them may be defined as heritage language (HL) learners (Valdés, 2000; Polinsky & Kagan, 2007). The research utilized a specially designed test consisting of oral and written components. Although there are substantial differences between the Russian-speaking populations in the two countries, the present research indicated that the motivation for learning Russian as well as the difficulties encountered during the learning process were very similar in both samples. The case system, verb aspect, and verbs of motion were found to be the most challenging topics to be mastered by all the respondents. Oral proficiency in both groups was much higher than their written proficiency. For the majority, an integrative motivation prevailed as opposed to an instrumental motivation. The present findings constitute an important basis for developing teaching materials that can be used at least partially in many countries outside the Russian Federation.