Diversifying Perspectives in Language Learning Materials
Guest post by Shannon Donnally Quinn (Associate Professor of Russian, Michigan State University) and Anna Tumarkin (Director of the Russian Language Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison), winners of the 2025 MAFLT LCTL Innovation Awards.
When the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in early 2022, a problem that had been increasingly obvious became much more urgent: traditional Russian language materials, which focused on the Russian Federation and mainly featured ethnic Russians and mainstream Russian culture, no longer fit the locations where students were studying abroad, and students needed to learn about a much more heterogeneous population of Russian speakers that they might encounter in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, or even at home. This challenged us to undertake the creation of Diverse Russian: A Multicultural Exploration, which is a new Open Educational Resource (OER) intended for Intermediate level learners of Russian. We hope that this resource will succeed in diversifying perspectives in Russian language learning materials.
Instead of ignoring the complex history of the Russian language around the world, Diverse Russian is built on critical reflection of history and colonial legacies, acknowledging the historical impact of Russian colonization on language and culture. It focuses on diverse communities: Ukraine, Central Asia, Caucasus, Baltic states, Indigenous peoples of Russia, and the United States, presenting Russian as a language of many identities, not just the state or ethnic Russians, and encourages students to question dominant narratives and reflect on diverse lived experiences. This level of complexity is difficult for students on the Intermediate level, but technology (we used Pressbooks and H5P) enables a greater number of students to access these materials through careful scaffolding. The H5P activity types Interactive Video and Course Presentation allow the content to be broken into manageable chunks and provide help features that can be accessed when needed and ignored when they are not needed, and step-by-step activities build language proficiency, cultural competence, and critical thinking. Some activities are provided in both English and Russian so that instructors or learners can choose the format that is the most helpful in their particular contexts, allowing instructors to differentiate.
One example of this is when students read a text about the Holodomor, learning about the famine that is now widely recognized as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. Students learn about the connection between the Holodomor and the linguistic landscape of Eastern Ukraine, specifically how the famine led to population replacement and the increased prevalence of the Russian language. The activities prompt students to reflect on language as a tool of colonization and cultural displacement.
Technology and the easy inclusion of various media formats also enables an emphasis on the local. The chapter on Kazakhstan focuses on the lexical topic of music, and in the activities in which students review the words for musical instruments, we were able to ensure that all of the video examples featured Kazakh artists. The book also comes from a valuing of translingual pedagogy. Users of the book are not expected to understand any of the local languages featured, but they learn about them, about language policy, and about the influence of local languages on the variety of Russian spoken in the region. Some examples include: an introduction to the Ukrainian language, the inclusion of the Russian language as spoken by native speakers of Georgian, and examples of code-switching by immigrants to the United States. Students are encouraged to listen to examples of local languages and acquaint themselves with media in those languages.
Other kinds of diversity are also highlighted. The chapter on family history includes vocabulary related to same-sex marriage, since that is a part of the family history of many of our students. One activity focuses on the effect of indigenous culture on current fashion in Russia, and forgotten histories like the Narva referendum in Estonia help students to connect history to current events in Ukraine and Moldova.
Technology also enables students’ own Russian-speaking communities to be diversified, and gives them the opportunity to participate in a wider Russian-speaking community. Each chapter includes an assignment which invites students to communicate with peers that are using the OER. For example, in the music chapter they are encouraged to explore playlists and discover new music, sharing a song with others.
Learn more about Diverse Russian: A Multicultural Exploration by watching the following video:
