Mastering Russian Case: Learning Challenges, Current Textbook Approaches, and New Perspectives

Russian case morphology is recognized as a persistent challenge to second (L2) and heritage language (HL) speakers of Russian by researchers and practitioners alike. However, little classroom-based and pedagogy-oriented literature exists on the matter. In this paper, we address this research gap. First, we present a review of the literature that attempts to explain the challenging nature of mastering Russian grammatical cases from the cognitive linguistic, structural, and psycholinguistic perspectives. We then describe the general approaches to teaching and learning Russian cases found in the most commonly used Russian language textbooks in the United States. Finally, we discuss a pedagogical approach to the teaching and learning of Russian cases based on the principle of usage-based linguistics. Using sample materials designed for teaching the accusative case based on these principles, we illustrate the approach and discuss its potential benefits in helping learners build a more systematic conceptual knowledge base and develop greater automatization of functional control over grammatical case.