Abstract:

A growing number of international students coming to Russia has led to the implementation of a new Export of education policy in the system of Russian higher education. Chinese students make up the majority of international students studying in Russia. Students tend to have certain difficulties with adjustment to the foreign academic environment. Chinese students pursuing the Russian language and Literature programmes have to study another foreign language alongside Russian. That puts them and university faculty in a conundrum of how to organise the multilingual educational process most efficiently. The present report sets out to determine the importance of considering personal culture-linguistic experience of learners in the elaboration of third language (L3) lesson plans. The report seeks to analyze the factors affecting L3 learners (knowledge of other languages and proficiency level in those, typical learning modes, socio-linguistic environment, “recency” of language usage, learner’s perceptive language distancy etc.) and validate an assumption that the factors bring invaluable insights into developing a pedagogical strategy. In the alignment with J. Cook’s multilinguistic interference theory, B. Hufeisen’s factor model and J.Cenoz factors classification we put together a questionnaire comprising open-ended questions aiming to determine the sociolinguistic background of students that affects their L3 acquisition. Third year undergraduate Chinese students, majoring in Russian language and Literature and learning English as a L3, took part in the research. For calculations the methods of Mathematics statistics were employed. The findings correlate with the overview of extralinguistic difficulties (differences in learning styles, a fear of “losing face”, collectivism-ridden reservedness etc.) that Chinese students struggle to overcome while studying abroad summarized and presented in the report. The results of the survey allow us to underpin the claim that the time factor is not of paramount importance when it comes to defining the L3. It is “recency” that has been proved to have a considerable influence on a multilingual’s supersystem. In the course of the experiment the learning style peculiarities that are characteristic of Chinese students and different from current Russian educational approach to language learning were pinned down. It was also revealed that the students would opt for methods and techniques in foreign language learning applied by Russian institutions despite all the struggles they have to deal with while studying. This data gives an uplifting vision on L3 courses further reinforcement in Russian universities. The findings can be applied by teachers elaborating language courses targeting at mainland Chinese students.

Keywords:

Third language acquisition, extralinguistic difficulties, Hufeisen’s factor model, Chinese students, learning modes, linguistic personality.