Abstract
As anyone who has worked with Russian heritage learners (HLLs) knows, addressing their unique learning needs is challenging for a number of reasons. Adult HLLs usually have fairly developed oral and aural proficiency but lack literacy skills. Hence comes the first challenge for Russian language programs and individual instructors: placing these learners into advanced language courses is impossible without first developing their literacy skills and metalanguage, whereas inviting them to join beginner-level courses inevitably frustrates everyone involved. From L2 students' perspective, HLLs speak and understand "too much" to be in the same group; for HL students, beginning language courses feel too slow, and as a consequence, HLLs often become demotivated. At the same time, instructors have neither the time nor the resources to support the unique needs of HL students who are a minority in their courses. In the rare cases when universities do offer specialized courses for HLLs, the challenge of supporting these learners in the most appropriate way remains, as instructors almost always have to attend to the significant differences in their students' language competence levels, both in terms of oral expression and in writing skills.