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Summarizing appears to be an activity well suited to sensitizing advanced foreign language readers to the inner workings of a text and weaning them away from wordto-word decoding. Indeed, recent research has emphasized the importance of summarizing as an aid to reading comprehension (Cohen, 1987; Bernhardt, 1986;Brown et al., 1981). We were interested in using summary writing as a tool in promoting reading comprehension and hypothesized that students who gained practice in extracting the main points of a text would become more effective readers.The main purpose of the study was to determine whether the comprehension of students who were trained to summarize improved more than that of students who responded to short-answer questions. The researchers, who teach EFL (English as a foreign language) at Haifa University, taught 6 classes totalling 179 students. Three classes summarized 10 academic texts of general interest, while the other three classes answered short-answer questions on the same texts. At the same time we collected information on the students' background in order to identify possible non-linguistic factors that may affect reading comprehension.Since the reading comprehension of all the classes improved significantly, it was not possible to say that either summarizing or the answering of questions was a major cause of this improvement. However, results suggest that writing summaries helped students read more efficiently. Results of MANOVA pointed to the conjoint effects of three factors: task (summary vs. short-answer questions), gender (male vs. female), and native language (Hebrew vs. Arabic).Perhaps the most interesting finding is that classroom discussion in which students negotiated the scoring key of both summaries and responses to short-answer questions (after handing in assignments) proved to be extremely valuable. This negotiation motivated students to become intensely involved with the text and more critical of their own responses. ISSN 0141-0423 $2.00 0 1990 Journal of Research in Reading (UKRA) 56 MARSHA BENSOUSSAN AND ISABELLE KREINDLER RESUME Lire et rksumer des textes en langue ktrang2reOn a demand6 A des etudiants d'universitk de lire des textes anglais appartenant a leur domaine de specialisation. En cours de lecture, gentralement, les etudiants resument et retirent l'information essentielle des textes. Des recherches rkcentes ont montre que la comprehension de la lecture se developpe par la pratique du resume, mais qu'il est plus difficile de resumer des textes ecrits dans une langue etrangere que dans sa propre langue.On a effectue une etude preliminaire pour examiner I'effet du resume sur la comprehension de la lecture. Les chercheurs, enseignants d'anglais comme langue etrangtre A I'Universite de Hayfa, ont enseignk A 6 classes, soit un total de 179 etudiants. Le groupe experimental de 3 classes a resume 10 textes, tandis que le groupe temoin de 3 classes, a repondu a des questions a reponse courte portant sur les mCmes textes. I1 a ete rkpondu, en hebreu et en anglais, A un pre-te...

The Soviet Union was a country with one of the most complex language situations in the world. Over one hundred nationalities were listed in its last 1989 census, ranging in size from 145 million Russians (50.8 percent of the population) to the ‘26 Peoples of the North’ who together numbered only 184,448. For most of these nationalities, the majority claimed that their national language was their mother tongue. However, knowledge of Russian as first or second language was claimed by about 62 percent of the non-Russians. Only 4.2 percent of the Russians reported fluency in one of the national languages, though among the Russians living outside the Russian Federation, bilingualism was about 19 percent (Anderson and Silver 1990, Arutiunian,et al.1992, Goskomstat 1991, Haarmann 1992).

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Lenin's crucial role in formulating and laying the foundations of Soviet nationality policy is acknowledged by all. His nationality program—whether one views it as opportunist and pseudo-Marxist or as “the outstanding contribution to the treasure trove of creative Marxism”—is considered to be his most original and perhaps most successful policy. Lenin's lasting impact on the nationalities themselves is attested by the fact that national dissidents in the Soviet Union often call for a return to “Leninist” policy. One dissident writes, “It is difficult to find today anything more useful, noble and imperative than the restoration of Lenin's nationalities policy.”According to most biographers, Lenin became involved with the nationality question only on the eve of World War I while living in exile in the multinational Austrian Empire. It was there that he recognized nationalism as a powerful force and began to devise a program that would harness it for the revolution. Opposing both the cultural autonomy scheme of the Austrian Marxists and the total scorn of nationalism by Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, in debates with fellow Marxists, formulated his own program.