Heritage Speakers in Russian Teacher Training Programs

A Comparison of Curricular Frameworks for Enhancing Linguistic and Communicative Competences of Future Teachers in Germany

Abstract

In Russian language teacher degree programs, learners of Russian as a heritage language differ in linguistic-communicative skills from monolingual native speakers as well as foreign language learners and are often not sufficiently considered. The didactics of Russian as a heritage language is missing despite a multitude of general recommendations and isolated available research results. This leads to individual solutions for dealing with the learners’ heterogeneity. This article compares the current curricular frameworks at German universities offering Russian teacher programs to summarize current trends for dealing with different prerequisites of Russian language learners. Based on this comparison, best practice examples will be presented and discussed.