Tim Cook is Professor of English at Iryo Sosei University, Japan. He holds an MAT in Teaching ESL/EFL from the School for International Training and a PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Alabama. Among his acknowledgments are an Emmy award for teaching Japanese on Georgia Public Broadcasting and designation as a Master Folk Artist by the Alabama State Council on the Arts for teaching shape-note singing. Email: timothy.cook@isu.ac.jp

 

Introduction

In this article I report on the process and progress of people teaching themselves beginning Russian. The group was initiated by me, a professor of English in a Japanese university. We meet online twice a week through Zoom. Our main instructional material is a Russian textbook written in Japanese. On the second of the two days per week, we have a language exchange by Zoom with Russians in Russia where most of the participants are learning Japanese. We are now in our fifth month of studying Russian. It is my hope that this report can provide some guidance to others who have no access to classes in a language that interests them, but who nevertheless still want to pursue its study.

 

Testing a theory

Throughout the 1990s, I taught Japanese by satellite television in two separate distance learning programs for high schools. Students received the instruction at school where a classroom facilitator was, or at least was supposed to be, present. The program administrators suggested that this person be a teacher of another foreign language if possible so that he or she would have more helpful insight for students regarding their language learning endeavor. At a bare minimum, the facilitator was responsible for turning on and off the equipment and sending and receiving homework assignments, this being an era before the Internet was a functional tool. However, in the opinion of the program administrators, students would perform better in the class if the facilitator studied Japanese along with the students, something I noticed to be true. Besides being able to convey to me, the teacher, any problems students had with the language, active facilitators helped create a certain group spirit that seemed to lift the students along to perform better. Facilitators serving as co-learners of Japanese often did not perform as well as the students, but their mere attempt at learning Japanese with their students was itself a factor in raising that spirit. I also noticed that in schools where groups of students enrolled in the course, the students tended to perform better than in schools where only one student was taking the course. While lone geniuses also took Japanese, they were very much the exception. This was no surprise in light of the social aspects of learning, something that had been well-described since at least the writings of William James and John Dewey.

Ever since those early days of distance learning, I have been interested in testing this out for myself, that is, learning a language by facilitating a group, but with the difference being that the group would have no instructor. As a foreign language instructor, I could offer the kind of assistance that foreign language-teaching facilitators from my past distance language programs provided to their students. However, I could not allow myself to slack behind the other students in learning the language as I would potentially need to help them in ways that a teacher would. I also wanted to find a group of target language speakers, preferably in a country where the language is spoken, people who were learning the language of the group I was facilitating, and with whom we could have regular conversation practice, both in our language and theirs, through a videoconferencing service. Living and teaching in Japan, I envisioned my group being Japanese speakers in a physical space and our online partners being in their own physical space with their own facilitator, again, preferably a foreign language teacher. I thought that if all of us were starting at the novice level, we would inevitably lapse into English, at least occasionally, but I considered that just another opportunity to practice a foreign language, which English would be for everyone except me. While interaction with speakers of our target language could not replace a teacher, a facilitator on each side might be able to articulate questions and structure activities more effectively than students would on their own.

 

The research

While teaching oneself a language is not uncommon, research into the phenomenon is rather scant. Scattered studies (for example, Chik & Ho, 2017, pp. 2–3; Nishioka, 2021, pp. 3–4) refer to self-instructional TV and radio broadcast and paper-based resources from pre-digital days and to later Internet communication technologies such as select language apps, websites, social networks, language MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), and YouTube videos. From my own past failed attempts with various of these tools to start learning new languages, I knew that if I were to start yet another language by myself, I would soon quit out of lack of motivation. “Just too busy after all,” I could always say with justification. If, however, I was responsible for the course and served a facilitator’s role, it would make it that much harder to get lazy and quit.

As digital technologies made it increasingly easy to meet people in different countries online, I as an instructor in other foreign language classes (I have taught both Japanese and English) began to organize online encounters for my students and speakers of my students’ target language (e.g., Cook, 2015, 2022). Many language exchange services began to appear pairing individuals studying the languages of their partners. Such exchanges also began on class-to-class and institutional levels. The term for these exchanges is not settled. Writers variable refer to “language exchange” (e.g., Kozar, 2014), “tandem language learning” (e.g., Sasaki, 2014), “telecollaboration,” and “virtual exchange” (e.g., Dooly & O’Dowd, 2018; O’Dowd & O’Rourke, 2019), with users of the last term, “virtual exchange,” claiming that this is now the preferred term. Each term carries different nuances and tendencies. For example, “tandem” implies two people, while “telecollaboration” suggests a project between groups. However, all such exchanges involve participants from different countries and cultures communicating with each other, typically with each group learning the language of the other. Sometimes the two sides communicate in the one language and sometimes, usually about half the time, in the other language. This presents challenges, particularly for beginning students, who, as Hagley (2020) points out, “are often not able to actively participate in such engagement and would become demotivated if forced to” (p. 76). As a rank beginner in a language, I could not hope to participate in any meaningful conversation in that language. Instead, I was counting on my group’s online partners speaking Japanese, or at least English, well enough for us to have those conversations with them in exchange for their reacting to our very basic language, whether answering our simple questions or asking us those questions. The ability to communicate is as much a motivation for beginners as it is for the most advanced language learners. Even basic language is meant for communication.

 

“Love thy enemies”

The first decision was to choose a language. To get a better feel for how effective this plan was, I wanted to try a language that I had never studied before. I have long believed in the power of not only speaking foreign languages but of simply learning them, to resolve conflict with the countries where those languages are spoken. Consequently, I am interested in learning the languages of our designated enemies. I resonate with paradoxical biblical command to “love thy enemies,” not from any particular religious motivation, but from lack of faith in the motivations of those who would have us hate and the interests served by hating. In the 1980s when China was transitioning from foe to friend, I taught English there for two years and tried teaching myself Chinese. Several years after 9-11, I took one semester of Arabic at the university where I was employed at the time. More recently as both Iran became increasingly vilified, and China re-vilified, I was interested in learning Farsi or resuming Chinese. However, as relations between Russia and the collective West began to deteriorate over the years, I started considering Russian. The level of animosity was greatly amplified after fighting broke out between Russia and Ukraine, which pushed me to take active measures to study Russian.

Having decided on Russian, I then needed to put together a group of people in Japan to study the language, preferably in the same physical space. I could have again gone to language exchange websites to find random Russian speakers learning Japanese, but having had past successes through the group comradery of school-to-school exchanges, I was hoping to put together a group of students in the university where I teach and then find a Russian university with whom we could partner. From the outset, that plan was nixed as my university informed me that because of the Ukraine situation, the Japanese government had released guidelines advising against further exchanges between Japanese and Russian educational institutions. In other words, no. Upon learning that, I decided to reserve a space in a local community center where my hoped-for group could meet. I was willing to pay the 1,000-yen fee (approximately US$8) for each day’s use of the facility. The room I reserved had a large TV monitor which I could use as a second monitor for my laptop computer. I decided that our meetings would be twice a week for 50-60 min each session. To make the commitment to join a little easier to accept, I stipulated that the course would only last four weeks, or eight sessions, but made an option to continue beyond that for anyone who so decided, which I hoped they would.

Having browsed for Japanese Russian textbooks in Tokyo bookstores, I picked the only one I could find that had both accompanying audio files and review exercises (Maeda, 2021, published by NHK, the Japanese state broadcasting system, although the book is not one used in its broadcast language lessons). The exercises were all old-school transformation, substitution, and translation drills, but I thought they were better than no exercises at all. I then made a flyer as catchy as I could, with all the pertinent information and my rationale for studying Russian. I asked a local international friendship organization if they could put out the word through their newsletter and website, and I decided to join Facebook groups for residents of my city in order to recruit fellow students. Through the local Facebook groups, I found two people who were interested, but hoping to get more, I also joined other groups for Japanese people interested in Russian culture. Although they were not located in my city, I found two more people that way. My wife also agreed to join us in order to help make a bigger group to encourage the group members. That made for an initial group of six, four females and two males including myself, a male.

Finding a Russian institution to cooperate in this exchange also presented some problems. The first thing I did was post a message on a Facebook group for Japanese university instructors of foreign languages. I asked if anyone knew educators in Russia whom I could contact to present my proposal for language exchange. I received some ambivalent and outright negative responses, which surprised me as they were coming from foreign language teachers who would presumably think the more communication between people, the better. “What would you do about war talk?” asked one person. “Probably not good timing for this,” said another. One person told me to boycott Putin and Russia, and to connect with Ukrainians instead. Another was rather insistent that this could be dangerous for Russian participants who expressed any disagreement with their government and that I should do more research on the dangers. I responded that I doubted our language level would allow for politics and that if participants tried to move in that direction, I would steer the conversation back to “What’s your favorite ice cream?” Another person agreeing with the potential dangers feared that Russian participants could be falsely accused of saying things they did not say, to which I responded that I would leave that judgment up to the participants’ professors and administrators. A few others reacted positively to my post, and some offered some leads in Russia. However, it was one person who contacted me privately that gave me the only lead that turned out to be fruitful. The contact was a female English instructor in a Russian university. I explained to her what I wanted to do, but that I did not know anyone in Russia, or even anyone from Russia. She wrote back encouragingly saying I no longer had that problem. Although not particularly interested in learning Japanese herself, she was quite impressed with what I was trying to do and served as a contact with her university’s Japanese department. However, she did not know anyone in that department personally and was not particularly optimistic that anyone there would be interested. That in fact turned out to be true. The department passed along my proposal to their study abroad division, but after some email exchange with them, no one in that division or the Japanese department offered to collaborate. I could not solve this dilemma before our first group encounter with Russians.

 

Classes start

Before the date I had set for starting Russian arrived, I looked ahead in the textbook at the preliminary section and Lesson 1. The preliminary section included an introduction to the Cyrillic alphabet, which is necessary to learn in order to read Russian or even to just follow the textbook. I spent some time online looking for Russian words with English cognates that most Japanese would understand. Using Google Translate, a Russian dictionary website, and a website to type Cyrillic letters on a roman keyboard, I then prepared PowerPoint slides of the alphabet. I began with the letters that are equivalent to roman letters, and matched words written in those letters with pictures of those words. I then did the same for Cyrillic letters that look like roman letters but represent different sounds, followed by Cyrillic letters that are completely different from roman letters. For several subsequent sessions, I prepared more PowerPoint slides to help with reading and vocabulary. The mere act of this preparation helped to reinforce the language for me, but I eventually quit as I decided that I was spending too much time on it.

On the first day of the class, my wife and I went to our community center to set up my computer, connect to Zoom for communicating with the online participants, arrange tables and chairs, lay out refreshments, and greet the in-person students. Of the four people who expressed interest in going to the community center, one other besides my wife and me showed up and the other appeared on Zoom instead. The two people outside my city also appeared on Zoom. One of the online students had studied Russian in the past and had even studied in Russia but was nevertheless interested in participating in the class. All the rest of us were entirely new to the language. After our self-introductions, I proceeded with my PowerPoint presentation for reading Cyrillic, which I thought was rather clever in design, but everyone else except for the person who had studied Russian in the past had more trouble than I had expected in reading the letters and words. In hindsight, I should have anticipated this difficulty as the Russian sound system is vastly different from Japanese, or even English, which itself is hard enough for Japanese speakers. In our textbook, the dialogues and example sentences have Japanese katakana script that accompany the Cyrillic text, so students could proceed without a firm grasp of Cyrillic. Because of the limited phonemes that katakana can represent, it is an inadequate way to represent Russian, but is close enough to give students a clue to the pronunciation at the beginning stage. I also played the audio files accompanying the textbook, although the audio files were only of whole sentences and dialogues, not of individual words. Accordingly, I had students repeat after me, even though I myself was just imitating the sounds in the audio files. Russian shares many more sounds with English than it does with Japanese, and I thought that my pronunciation as an English speaker, foreign language teacher, and foreign language learner, was probably close enough until we all could confirm our pronunciation with Russian speakers.

I had designated the second session of each week as the day to talk to Russian speakers. Not yet able to find Russians studying Japanese by this time, I thought I would start out with my Russian English teacher contact and her students of English. For the Japanese portion of the exchange, we would just have to speak English instead. I told my students that they could leave during that portion, but everyone stayed, even though one of them could not follow the conversation. All of us helped translate for this person. I thought it was a valuable experience, one which I repeated the next week. I was grateful to have Russian speakers kindly help us at this beginning stage; however, an English exchange is not what I had planned or had proposed to the Japanese speakers.

While still in email conversation with my friend’s university about connecting with students of Japanese, I went to two free language exchange websites that I had used in the past, www.language-exchanges.org and www.conversationexchange.com, and found Russian students of Japanese to join us for our third week. We connected to four Russian people this way, three of whom joined us more than once, but only one of whom has continued with us to the present, now in our 16th week. In the meantime, one of my Russian contact’s university students found that the university had a Japanese club. The student gave a contact for the club to my teacher contact who then passed it on to me. Since then, members of the club have also been speaking with us off and on in Russian and Japanese, and occasionally in English. Only on one occasion has no one from Russia joined our weekly session with Russians.

From the beginning, I was the student who seemed to study Russian the most. Some apparently did not study at all except during our twice-weekly sessions. After the first session, attendance started to slack off. All but one of the students eventually quit attending altogether, and that one student soon started participating by Zoom instead of coming to the community center. I therefore could not use meeting in physical space as a way to build group cohesion and thereby increase motivation. As for the four-week commitment period, it did not seem to affect the timing when people quit participating, although this was not something on which I had put any special emphasis. That stipulation was mainly my attempt to not scare aware potential students who might have been intimidated by the thought of a longer-term commitment. While the dynamics of two people online are different from a larger group in one physical space, the greatest difference is between a group of two—in-person or otherwise—and no group at all. I find that the one person who has stayed with the course has been important for my own motivation to continue. However, my new connections with Russian people are strong enough that they are also highly motivating for me.

 

Students’ impressions

Sixteen weeks after most of the students in Japan had quit, I sent them some questions via our messaging system (Facebook Messenger). I asked them to give me both the good and bad parts of this attempt at self-study. I would not suppose the answers to be entirely objective as neither the questions nor the answers were given anonymously, but their answers still provided useful insights. The questions were as follows (translated from the Japanese):

1. What made you want to study Russian?
2. What do you think of this method of studying?
3. What are the limitations of this method of studying?
4. What do you think of not having a teacher?
5. What do you think of the textbook?
6. What do you think of communicating with Russian people?
7. What are the difficulties in continuing to study?

The answers were varied. Respondents had both specific and general reasons for studying Russian: previous travel to the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan; interest in Russian ballet; trade with Russia through work; desire to take advantage of a language learning opportunity; a special meaning in studying Russian in the midst of current world affairs; longstanding interest in Eastern European culture, people, history, and religion; and respect for “the mindset of the Russian people.” The person who learned Russian in the past thought it would be a good chance to relearn. The timing of the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine were also a motivation for this person.

Regarding this method of studying, the lack of a teacher, and its limitations, answers were both positive and negative. Most gave positive answers on the general question about the method, but on the limitations and lack of a teacher, answers were more specific. At the technical level, one thought that the slight time lag between the different online parties caused people to speak over each other. In regard to the pedagogy, one respondent thought there were not enough opportunities to practice pronunciation. This person thought it would be more effective if there more chances to listen and repeat. Without a teacher, one commented, there was a lack of adequate correction. This made it difficult to identify one’s own deficiencies. It also caused differences in progress between students to widen, another noted. Conversely, another did not particularly feel as though we lacked a teacher because we could practice with Russian people who often explained points that a teacher would explain. One respondent thought the sessions without Russians were boring and “mixed up in some aspects” but liked the sessions with the Russian English teacher. This person wanted “more elaborate lessons,” which I took to mean lessons with more structure. For that reason, this person decided to subscribe to an online Russian teaching course. Another advantage of that particular course, the respondent stated, was that it was easier to adjust learning time with work demands.

There were only two specific comments about the textbook. One thought the textbook was too hard for beginners and another thought that while the explanations were easy enough to understand, the beginning lessons of the textbook did not present more familiar vocabulary, such as that which could be used in self-introductions and expressing likes and dislikes.

Everyone who commented about communicating with Russian people gave positive responses about the opportunity. One said it was fun. Other comments were that we could learn a lot about Russia and that the exchanges provided motivation to study harder. Another commenter noticed that there are many things that can only be learned through exchange. This person also lamented the current sense of crisis in which communication with Russian people is being shut down.

Among the people who had quit, most of the difficulties they identified related to lack of time, both to study and to attend the sessions, and the priority they had to place on work or other study. One respondent was often still commuting home when the sessions started. Another was the parent of a toddler, which is demanding enough, but both the parent and the toddler caught Covid-19, which made it very difficult to continue studying Russian. Lastly, a respondent mentioned that Russian was more difficult than initially anticipated. Lack of confidence moving forward was the reason given for quitting.

I also asked some of the same questions to the one Russian person who has stuck with us from the beginning to the present, a researcher in a Russian research facility. To this person, I asked the following questions (in English):

1. Why did you start studying Japanese and why are you continuing to practice it?
2. Do you have a teacher? What do you think about studying without a teacher?
3. What do you think of the opportunities to practice speaking Japanese online? Is there anything you would change if you could?
4. Anything else you want to add?

This person answered that studying Japanese began in university and was motivated by interest in Japanese culture. Switching fields in university came with different priorities, and for 20 years, this person could not make time for continuing with Japanese. However, this person’s schedule has changed, freeing up extra time to return to an old interest in Japanese. Lack of money is the reason cited for not studying with a teacher, but having had past education in linguistics and study of other languages to good results with excellent teachers, this person felt confident in knowing the language learning process well enough that the lack of a teacher currently is not a problem. The person also utilizes other methods to study and shared a YouTube site for advanced Japanese, something I myself thought I could use. The most positive comments were about the online language exchange with my Japanese students and me. I thought the full answer to this question (#3) was insightful.

I think it is a great opportunity. Before that we have to find native speakers in Moscow, which required some efforts. Travelling to the country is very helpful but it is expensive especially for a long term which is necessary to acquire a language. I think it might be helpful to bring more structure like topics to discuss and do a bit of preparation, but I like the sessions very much as they are because they boost my motivation to learn. After them I think I should study harder because I want to express my opinion and have interesting discussions.

This person’s only other additional comments were to notice how my own Russian had improved over the weeks, and to offer to help me more with any questions.
 

The facilitator’s impressions

Despite my best efforts, this project has turned out somewhat differently than I had first envisioned. What I had hoped for were bonds of solidarity and friendship between participants, both among their own group and with their corresponding group abroad. In particular, a high school or university class or club dedicated to the language of their exchange partners would not only afford students the time they need to dedicate to their study, the significance of their endeavor beyond just taking a class could help bolster group intimacy and affections. Given the chance to direct some of that intimacy and affections toward their exchange partners, students could find their motivation boundless, particularly with the active participation of each club’s faculty advisor. Such relationships would have been strengthened even further, I thought, if the respective groups met together in a physical space. After the request to conduct the sessions on my campus was denied, I was excited about using the local community center and proud that the community had such a facility. That plan soon sputtered out due to inconvenience of the participants and all our interactions moved online. This is an inherent limitation of busy working people trying to take on the task of studying a language with a group.

Among the members of our group, I was the one who had the most criticism of the textbook. The audio files and the exercise problems have indeed been useful, and the explanations are clear without going into over-explanation, but I find the sequencing of the language not well thought out. My complaint echoes one made by one of the students. In particular, the book presents Russian’s three noun genders, their cases, the various types of adjectives, their transformations depending on the case and gender of the nouns they modify, the plural forms of nouns and adjectives by their gender and cases, the exceptions to all the above, and the exceptions to the exceptions, all before we learn how to say “What’s your name?” or “I have a question.” These two particular sentences are indeed grammatically complex in Russian, but a communicative approach would favor learning and using useful language before being able to thoroughly analyze its grammatical structure. Even when we finally did get to these useful phrases, my grasp of the grammar was weak anyway because it was too much for me to remember without more context. This may, at least in part, explain why one person thought the lessons were boring. I myself thought so. In every lesson, I take to online dictionaries and translation websites to say basic things that have not yet been presented, but the other students, now just one other student, cannot understand the language without my translating it. As a student, I am not disciplined enough to keep a language notebook, so I tend to forget what I had looked up, or I inefficiently look up the same thing over and over. I went to the website that the bored person mentioned and thought that it was indeed more useful, even the free version without a teacher. However, the website was in English, which was beyond the reach of most of the other students, and the website eventually asked me to pay.

In spite of these criticisms and shortcomings, the most important thing for me and the other participant still studying with me is that we are doing just that: still studying. To a large extent, one person is the reason why the other one continues. The other reason is our new connections with Russian people. While restrictions on travel between Japan and Russia remain, the thought of visiting these people in Russia or their visiting us in Japan is more motivation to continue. No matter how good or bad a curriculum or pedagogy is, it only works as long as the student is motivated to stay with it. So far, these human contacts, between me and the other student here in Japan, and between us and the Russians, is providing that motivation. I cannot be sure, but I have a feeling that where we have come so far will push our language study quite far into the future.

 

References

Chik, A., & Ho, J. (2017). Learn a language for free: Recreational learning among adults. System, 69, 162–171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2017.07.017

Cook, T. M. (2015). Using Skype to welcome incoming exchange students. TESOL Video News. http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolvdmis/issues/2015-03-02/2.html

Cook, T. M. (2022). Videoconferencing imitating television in foreign language instruction. Mask & Gavel, 10, 53–69. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTSIG.PIE10.1

Dooly, M., & O’Dowd, R. (2018). Telecollaboration in the foreign language classroom: A review of its origins and its application to language teaching practice. In M. Dooly & R. O’Dowd (Eds.), In this together: Teachers’ experiences with transnational, telecollaborative Language learning projects (pp. 11–34). Peter Lang.

Hagley, E. (2020). Effects of virtual exchange in the EFL classroom on students’ cultural and intercultural sensitivity. Computer-Assisted Language Learning Electronic Journal, 21(3), 74–87.

Kozar, O. (2014). Language exchange websites for independent learning. In D. Nunan & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Language learning beyond the classroom (pp. 121–130). Routledge.

Maeda, I. (2021). Korekara hajimeru Roshiago nyuumon [Introduction to Russian starting now]. NHK Publishing.

Nishioka, H. (2021). My Korean language teachers are YouTubers: Learning Korean via self-instruction. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2021.1928227

O’Dowd, R., & O’Rourke. (2019). New developments in virtual exchange in foreign language education. Language Learning & Technology, 23(3), 1–7.

Sasaki, A. (2014). E-mail tandem language learning. In D. Nunan & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Language learning beyond the classroom (pp. 115–126). Routledge.

 

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