Text Comprehension: Language and Culture

This course explores the challenges of understanding texts in a foreign language. It examines the essential characteristics that make a text coherent rather than just a collection of sentences, as well as various types of lacunas (gaps in meaning or cultural knowledge) that can hinder comprehension. The course illustrates and analyzes selected morphological, semantic, and syntactic features of the language that influence interpretation and mirror patterns of Russian mind and culture. Students will analyze some linguistic features and cultural contexts that influence the interpretation of educational texts in a foreign language. The course highlights the close connection between language, culture, and national mentality. Counts as a course in language and linguistics or history, politics, and culture.