Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Influence of Family Language Policies on Language Proficiency Across Generations: A Study of Russian-Speaking Families in Germany 

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review this study which investigates the influence of family language policies on language proficiency across three generations of Russian-speaking families in Germany.  

While this study and its findings are interesting, it requires major revisions. I suggest developing the Introduction further by providing more details of similar studies that have been conducted, and their findings, including studies which do not necessarily include Russian. Studies reported are presented very globally with no real information provided on the findings. Furthermore, important studies are quoted in the Results section of the article which could have been introduced in the Introduction (Literature review) in order to better situate the current study from a theoretical and methodological point of view (e.g., Schwartz, 2008). It would be helpful overall if the authors provided more guidance to readers, enabling them to navigate the article more easily. This includes introductions to each main section announcing what will be included.

Below are precise comments relating to different aspects of the article with line references to help guide the authors.

 

INTRODUCTION

1. It would be helpful for the reader if the Introduction was sub-divided into subsections with sub-headings.

2. Authors quote Spolsky (2004) in lines 30-35 but then say in line 38 that “Originally, FLP was defined as…” and quote King et al. (2008). This does not make sense since the Spolsky definition of FLP precedes that of King and colleagues.

3. Can the authors report some more findings relating to children as developing new speakers (line 58)? This section requires more detail.

4. The authors mention studies exploring “child agency” (line 70) but they do not report findings from these. For example, they say “Following from these studies, it became clear that the level of knowledge in a heritage language often depends on a complex interplay of a variety of factors, both intra- and extralinguistic ones”. What are these factors? And why might they be important in relation to the current study?

5. What are some of the key findings of studies on “how Russian is used within families and the family’s attitudes towards it” (line 85) which might be useful in relation to the current study?

6. Since the current study aims to focus “on the role of literacy among representatives of three generations comprising Russian-speaking families in Germany” (lines 89-90), it would be useful to report findings of other studies which have explored this question.

7. The authors present a hypothesis for research question 1 but there is not sufficient information provided in the Introduction to justify this hypothesis. By reporting in more detail on the findings of studies referenced in the Introduction, the hypothesis will be more robust (lines 92-94).

 

THE CURRENT STUDY

8. Lines 107-108 – aged 10 to 20 is not “teenage years”. Teenage years are from 13 to 19.

9. It is important to inform readers how the authors know, for example, the children “primarily communicate in Russian when at home, despite their early exposure to German » (lines 127 and following”. Was this information given in a questionnaire or an interview, for example? Idem for information gathered on parents and grandparents. While details are provided later in the paper, it is important to guide the reader at this stage as to where the information reported came from.

10. “all children are characterized by an early onset of bilingual language exposure”. (lines 132-133). Are the children simultaneous or consecutive bilinguals? Refer to De Houwer’s or Meisel’s classification of bilinguals, for example.

11. “Their immigration backgrounds include nine repatriates and eight Soviet Jews, along with two individuals without such a background” (lines 146-147) Meaning not clear in underlined text.

12. “Both the questionnaire and the cloze deletion test were completed by the participants in presence of the test administrators to ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness of the data collected.” (lines 160-162). Where did data collection take place? This information should be given in section of Procedure.

13. How were participants informed about the study and invited to participate? It would be helpful to have a Procedures section providing this and other information. What was the response rate? Were participants thanked in any way for their participation? What about ethical approval for the study? Were children, parents and grandparents together when the questionnaires were completed?

14. It would be useful to see the questions asked in the questionnaire in an Appendix.

15. “By scoring the answers for each question in a comparable way, we were able to compile a cumulative score for every participant and every section of the questionnaire” (lines 177-179). What were the different sections of the questionnaire?

16. “we inquired about the language the participants considered to be their native language” (lines 188-189). What is the authors’ understanding of “native language”? This should be clarified as it is a term that is debated in the literature.

17. “the total number of languages they speak” (line 190). Why is it important to know this? Were participants asked about the degree of proficiency in each of the languages listed? What does it mean “to speak a language”?

18. Who completed the questionnaires? Children? Parents? Grandparents? Was there one questionnaire per person or per family?

19. “By asking participants to rate their skills in these areas for both Russian and German, we aimed to capture a detailed view of their self-perceived bilingual or multilingual competencies.” (lines 194-196). If the authors only asked about Russian and German, why do they refer to “multilingual competencies”?

20. It would be useful to provide the full statements participants had to judge in the language ideology section of the question. The information provided in lines 240-254 is very general. Or the authors could put the full questionnaire in an appendix and refer the reader to it. It would help to be familiar with the questions asked before the section analysing these in the Results (lines 491-522).

 

RESULTS

21. It would be useful to provide an introduction in the Results section explaining how the results will be organized.

22. “However, 84% of them state that they have a greater proficiency in German than in Russian which highlights the well-known fact that a perceived native language does not necessarily represent the stronger language in terms of proficiency.” (lines 271-273). Provide references to support the statement that this is a “well-known fact”.

23. Line 275 Capital letter to start the sentence “The grandparents…”.

24. “the grandparents report the strongest emotional connection to Russian” (lines 275-276). How do the authors’ data enable them to make this statement about an “emotional connection to Russian”?

25. Details of the scoring bands in the cloze test (lines 308-314) could have been given in the Methods section when presenting the test.

26. Regarding the cloze test, was it designed for people of all ages? Was the vocabulary and content adapted to children? How does the reader know that the test was appropriate for both younger and older participants? The authors say it was standardised so on what age population was it normed? Might this explain why the younger children scored lower than the older children? (lines 324-326)

27. Can the authors make it clearer why they included self-assessments of German proficiency in a multiple regression analysis investigating Russian proficiency? (lines 344-346)?

28. “Similar findings were reported in Protassova’s study (2018), where children exhibited a higher frequency of majority language usage in their daily interactions compared to their parents, resulting in a higher index of majority language use among children.”  (lines 389-391) It would be useful to include this study in the Introduction (Literature review) if it explored similar questions to the current study. Indeed, the authors reference several studies in the paragraph from line 391-401 which could have been detailed in the Literature review.

29.  Insufficient information is provided in the Methods section to prepare the reader for certain of the results presented. For example, in lines 224-226, the authors say “we gathered responses from a specific section of our questionnaire that inquired about the children’s contact with Russian-speaking individuals living outside of Germany.” but it is only in the Results section that this is fully developed and that the reader learns that participants were questioned about phone calls, video calls, etc. (Table 7).

30. In section 2.3.3, the authors talk first about media consumption activities (lines 220-223), then about contact with Russian speakers outside of Germany (lines 224-227). The results are presented in the reverse order. It would be helpful for the reader if the same order was maintained in the methodology and the results.

31. The literature on the relationships between book reading and language proficiency in young bilinguals could also have been discussed in the literature review since the authors present their findings on this in lines 443-449. Key references appear in the Discussion (lines 604-605) but these should have been presented and discussed in the literature review. This would have enabled the authors to assess more effectively their own findings in the light of earlier studies.

32. In statement 9 of the questionnaire in the language ideologies section, “When I have children, I want them first of all to learn the Russian language”, why is it important that children should first learn Russian language? Could they not be exposed to two languages from birth? In the Discussion, the authors say the children’s results reveal that “This might be one factor that contributes to the fact that their commitment to transmit Russian to their own children is not at ceiling and shows considerable interindividual variation.” (lines 562-564) Could it not also be that the wording of the question was rather exclusive, not allowing for bilingual exposure from birth?

 

DISCUSSION

33. In interpreting the finding that parents scored higher in the Russian cloze test than grandparents, the authors suggest it might be the result of parents having “more recent experiences regarding (language) testing in case of the parents compared to the grandparents” (lines 533-534). Are there other possible explanations? In the Discussion the authors say “Interestingly, not only literacy skills in Russian, but also in German affects Russian proficiency scores, especially in children. This finding is in line with previous studies investigating the effect of literacy skills on bilingual language development (cf., inter alia, Böhmer 2016 for heritage speakers of Russian in Germany) ” (lines 608-611) but this does not enable the reader to understand why this may be so. 

34. How can the authors deduce that grandparents “show slightly higher emotional attachment to Russian compared to the other groups in our study. » (lines 537-538). What evidence is there in the study for emotionalattachment on the part of grandparents, parents (line 549) and children (line 561), based on answers to questions in the authors’ questionnaire?

35. Line 557 “they state to predominately use » problem of English here.

36. “This observed shift regarding language proficiency and use points to the evolving sociolinguistic dynamics in immigrant families. This reflects broader trends of language shift and maintenance in immigrant communities and underscores the need for supportive policies that encourage multilingualism and cultural diversity” (lines 568-572). It is important to include references from the literature to support this type of statement.

37. The Discussion tends to report the results presented in the Results section without elaborating the reflection much further.

 

CONCLUSIONS AND OUTLOOK

38. « The current study was able to confirm many findings of previous studies dealing with Russian-speaking families in Germany and the sociolinguistic situation of Russian as a heritage language in Germany.” (lines 624-626) Such studies should have been presented in some detail in the literature review. Indeed, much of the information provided in the Conclusions and Outlook section of the paper should be introduced in the Literature review.

39. “However, in case of the population under focus, Russian stays an integral part of their identity with first of all emotional values attached to it (see, e.g., Anstatt 2017)” (632-634) What evidence is there for this from the findings of the current study with regard to questions relating to identity (not the focus of this paper and not defined) and emotional values attached to Russian?

40. Did the questionnaires ask families how often the children interacted with their grandparents? The authors state that “we were able to determine the important role of the grandparents as a stronghold for the maintenance of Russian as the language of family conversations.” (lines 637-638). To support this statement, it is important to be sure that the children were in regular contact with their grandparents.

41. “depends on a whole bunch of factors” (line 642) This is a rather informal expression for an academic article. Please rephrase.

42. While the authors have discussed certain limitations of their study, they have not discussed the novelties of the current study in relation to other studies.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Author Response

Reviewer 1 (R1)

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study investigated the language shift from the home/heritage language (Russian) to the dominant language (German) among 18 multi-generational family units (19 first-generation, 32 second-generation, and 25 third-generation Russian-speaking immigrants to Germany). The results show "a significant generational shift in language proficiency," such that the first generation (grandparents) shows a strong preference for Russian, while the second generation (parents) and third generation (children) indicate a stronger preference for German.

The strengths of this study include the sampled participants and the target population. The study collected survey data from 18 multi-generational family units, totaling 76 individuals who satisfied very specific selection criteria. The study also conducted a language proficiency assessment (a cloze test) with all participants. It is undoubtedly not an easy effort to obtain such an amount of data, and both the amount and quality of the data are the major strengths of the study. The description of the different language preferences and ideas among the target population (Research Question 1) was clearly addressed and supported with sufficient data. It should also be noted that, as indicated in the manuscript (page 3), the target population (Russian-speaking Germans) is currently undergoing rapid changes due to international politics, and the data will serve as an important benchmark for those who are interested in exploring the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the maintenance of heritage Russian speakers in Germany. In short, the amount and the quality of data is significant and warrants some acknowledgment.

Despite the high quality of the data, the study has several shortcomings that must be addressed before publication. These shortcomings include the theoretical framework and the conclusions, which are not directly supported by the data.

There are mismatches between the theoretical framework and the data collected through the surveys. For example, the manuscript presents the data as a study of family language policies (FLP), but none of the survey questions directly asked about the FLP that each family adopted. If I understood correctly, the type of FLP was surmised from a survey question about language use (Table 6 and lines 589-590), such that the use of the "principle of maximal engagement with the minority language” was inferred from the predominant use of Russian in the family (but, lines 396-401 seem to imply that there was some data point that directly asked about each family's FLP -- if so, this should be clearly addressed in the manuscript). Overall, the data concerning the FLP should be more explicitly presented if FLP is the central topic of the study (which is Research Question 2).

Similarly, Research Question 3 (literacy skills and language management strategies) was not clearly supported with the data at hand. For example, the relationship between literacy skills and heritage language proficiency (Table 5 as well as Lines 606-608) was based on a multiple-regression analysis with self-reported assessments and the proficiency scores obtained from the cloze test. This analysis has several weaknesses, such as the fact that self-reported proficiency does not really represent the participants' literacy skills. Also, since the cloze test usually assesses literacy proficiency rather than oral fluency, it is not surprising to see that there were significant relationships only between "Self-Assessed Literacy Skills" and the proficiency test scores (but not with "Self-Assessed Oral Skills). The data did not present very strong evidence that literacy skills (but not oral skills) have a high predictive value for heritage language proficiency, as concluded by the authors.

 

Other minor comments/issues:

- Table 1: This table is informative and very useful for understanding the sampled data.

- Lines 258-259: Many participants were multilingual speakers and spoke languages other than Russian and German. It would be helpful to see which other languages they spoke.

- Table 3: The scale is not consistent with other data points. Self-rated proficiency uses the 5-Likert scale: 0 ("cannot/very bad") to 4 ("very good").

- Lines 308-314: More information about the cloze test employed in the study would be helpful. It is particularly beneficial to understand how this proficiency assessment measured the participants' overall proficiency (rather than only their literacy skills). Also, a sample of the cloze test might be useful given the unexpected result that grandparents (grandfathers) scored significantly lower than the parent group. There should be a discussion to support the validity of this assessment.

- Table 6: The scale is 1 to 5 (1 = only German and 5 = only Russian).

- Table 6: It isn't clear why two symmetrical columns do not show the same data (e.g., Parents-Parents, which shows 3.57 in one column and 3.91 in the other). Maybe the table is not symmetrical, but this wasn't clear.

- Table 7: I am not sure if the score of 2.16 (which is equivalent to "once a year") warrants the conclusion that "[the participant] contacts with Russian speakers outside Germany" (Line 585). To me, the results suggest that the participants very infrequently contact Russian speakers outside Germany.

- Table 7: The scale is 0 to 5 (0=never, 1=less than once a year, 2=once a year, 3=several times a year, 4=once a month, 5=once a week).

- Table 8: The scale is 0 to 4 (0=never and 4=often).

- Table 9: The scale is 0 to 5 (0=no use of the media, 1=only German, and 5=only Russian).

- Lines 481-486: I think the R^2 of 0.20 is a meaningful score in a social sciences/psychology study like this one (especially since the sample size is small).

- Line 494: The scale for language preferences is 1 to 4 (1=completely disagree to 4=completely agree).

- Lines 538-539: It is not clear where the conclusion was drawn from: "[the participants] call for more institutional support of the Russian language in German educational settings."

Author Response

Reviewer 2 (R2)

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper, ‘Influence of Family Language Policies on Language Proficiency Across Generations: A Study of Russian-speaking Families in Germany’, discusses an extensively studied but still challenging issue of family language policy and its influence on the maintenance of Russian in the third generation of heritage speakers. My comments concern the following:

General:

1) It is not clear what is the contribution of this particular study to the existing research on this issue. It is not a replication of a previous study, it does not test an existing hypothesis, it is not a debate with previous research, etc. I suggest sharpening the main goal and specifying the exact contribution of this research to the field.

2) The sample is too small for statistical power and reliability. 

3) More caution is then needed when discussing the results. 

4) In the Discussion section: the results are summed up, but there is very little connection made to previous research, and there is practically no reflection on the differences / commonalities between this study and others. This will make this specific contribution to common debate stronger and more articulate. 

Line 75: variety of factors, both intra- and extralinguistic > it will be more helpful if the authors mentioned a couple of these factors instead of only referring to the previous research.

Line 90: RQ (1) cannot consist in describing something > I suggest reformulating this RQ.

Line 92: the authors hypothesize that the three generations will differ regarding their language practices and their views regarding language maintenance > I suggest sharpening this hypothesis due to its evidence > no research is needed to come to such a conclusion.

Line 94-95: the investigated components of family language maintenance > I suggest mentioning these in the RQ2 as it is not clear what the authors mean.

Lines 117-118: (2.1 Participants) > unclear:

- Whether or not two families without grandparents are included in the study. If they are included, it is not clear why, because the whole study is about the tri-generational representation. If they are not included, then the study is based on 16 families which certainly influences the reliability of the statistics and conclusions.

- The exclusion of the siblings with weak proficiency in Russian is not motivated enough and provides a biased picture of the situation of language maintenance in the third generation. If it is not relevant for the study, it must be mentioned.

Lines 246-250: (2.3.5 Language ideology) > unclear whether the children aged < 7 were also asked to indicate their opinion on such questions as benefit of Russian for professional careers, cultural and cognitive value of Russian, etc. If not, it must be specified who were asked to respond to these questions.

Table 2: for the clarity: it will be better to give numbers and not percentages as it is a small group of participants.

Lines 307-312: (3.2 Proficiency scores in cloze deletion test) > the content of this test is unclear > I suggest, as not everyone is acquainted with the test of Luchkina, to provide more information on it. Then, maybe, the results of the grandparents will be easier to interpret.

- Further, as this test was developed for adults and based on an article from a newspaper, it is not clear whether it underwent any adaptation for the needs of the children (mean age 12.32). This must be clarified of provided with arguments why it hasn't been done.

Figure 1: There is a strong discrepancy between the number of children and grandparents. It weakens the conclusions.

- Further, from the Participants’ section, I understood that there were 16 families with grandparents, from Figure 1 I can count only 9 grandmothers and 7 grandfathers. So, it is unclear how many families with both grandparents participated in the study. Or the authors dealt only with one grandparent per family?

Table 8-9: two different scales are used to estimate language preferences, but there is no argumentation why.

Figure 2: the scores presented are from 22 children, compared to Figure 1 where 24 children participated in the analysis. I could not find any information why the children’s samples vary.

Line 534: the grandparents score lower than the parents in the proficiency test which is interesting. However, the explanation given is not sufficient. Information on the test itself might be useful when finding the arguments.

Line 542: what is the role of education in the choice of the language the parents make when communicating with the children? In the Participants’ section 12 parents had no higher education (versus 15 who had). If the authors did not do anything with this information why it is then included? If there is no difference, then it must be mentioned.

- There is also no reflection on the statistical results presented in Table 4. 

Line 588: (RQ2) > the statistical analysis reveals no clear effect of these factors. However, the authors do not attempt to explain this observation.

Line 615: (RQ3) > the authors claim the relevance of literacy skills and HL instruction, but provided no information how, for how long and where the children received literacy instruction and developed their literacy skills. The claim that duration of instructed learning is a key factor is also not supported by the way this research is presented.

Conclusions: the study was able to confirm many findings of previous studies > but the reflection on them throughout the article is lacking or very limited.

 

Author Response

Reviewer 3 (R3)

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I advise the authors to get the article proof-read by a native English speaker.

Author Response

1. I advise the authors to get the article proof-read by a native English speaker. Thank you for your suggestion. We have already requested proofreading, but the journal's editorial office informed us that a proofreader is not required during the revision stage. They also mentioned that a free English editing service will be provided to correct any minor issues during the final copy-editing phase.
2. Comment from my first review of this paper and authors’ response

It is important to inform readers how the authors know, for example, the children “primarily

communicate in Russian when at home, despite their early exposure to German » (lines 127

and following”. Was this information given in a questionnaire or an interview, for example?

Idem for information gathered on parents and grandparents. While details are provided later

in the paper, it is important to guide the reader at this stage as to where the information

reported came from. We have added the requested information. Please refer to lines 196-197 for the updated content.

3. Line 235 “in a bimodal way”. What does this mean here exactly? What were the two modes? We have added the requested information. Please refer to lines 196-197 for the updated content.
4. The authors have not responded to the comment below from my original review. While it is important to give information about ethical approval in the specific section after the end of the paper itself, it is also important to include in the body of the paper how ethical approval was obtained. As I said in my initial review, a Procedures section would be useful to provide certain information, such as: How were participants informed about the study and invited to participate? What was the response rate? Were participants thanked in any way for their participation? What about ethical approval for the study? We have added the requested information. Please refer to lines 228-233 for the updated content. However, the response rate cannot be precisely quantified, as we received numerous messages and emails from interested families, but some had to be declined due to not meeting the study’s participation criteria.
5. I cannot see what the authors are referring to in their response to the comment below from my first review. It is still not clear how the cumulative scores were complied. Please refer to lines 259-268
6. Comment from my first review of this paper and authors’ response “By scoring the answers for each question in a comparable way, we were able to compile a cumulative score for every participant and every section of the questionnaire” (lines 177-179). What were the different sections of the questionnaire? Please refer to lines 234-240
7. In the paper itself, the question below from my first review has not been answered, to my satisfaction. While the authors conclude that what they have written “suggests a strong emotional connection to the Russian language” (line 365), the reader (not just the reviewer) needs to be convinced of how the authors arrived at this conclusion. The grandparents’ responses perhaps suggest a strong emotional connection to Russian but did the grandparents report this explicitly and, if so, where did they do this? This should be clarified. "Emotional connection" conveys the idea that the grandparents feel a strong personal attachment to the Russian language, which aligns with their high percentage of identifying it as their native language. Refer to lines 379-383
8. Could the authors also elaborate on the “qualitative data obtained from the questionnaires”, mentioned in their response? This preference for using Russian, particularly in contexts where emotional or cultural topics were involved, strongly suggests their deep emotional connection to the language
9. Comment from my first review of this paper and authors’ response

“the grandparents report the strongest emotional connection to Russian” (lines 275- 276).

How do the authors’ data enable them to make this statement about an “emotional

connection to Russian”? "Emotional connection" conveys the idea that the grandparents feel a strong personal attachment to the Russian language, which aligns with their high percentage of identifying it as their native language.

10. While the authors may not feel the need to follow up in the paper itself on the reviewer’s questions, it is important for readers to have adequate information on the norming processes of the cloze test used, in order to be assured that it is appropriate for all participants in their study, regardless of their age. Having this knowledge will make the results more robust. Please add this information to the paper itself.

Comment from my first review of this paper and authors’ response

Regarding the cloze test, was it designed for people of all ages? Was the vocabulary and

content adapted to children? How does the reader know that the test was appropriate for

both younger and older participants? The authors say it was standardised so on what age

population was it normed? Might this explain why the younger children scored lower than

the older children? (lines 324-326) We have added the requested information. Please refer to lines 296-302 for the updated content.

 

11. With regard to the question below from my first review, can the authors specify in the paper itself how they know that all grandparents, “frequently interacted with their children and grandchildren”? Clearly, for the authors’ results to be convincing, the reader requires this information.

Comment from my first review of this paper and authors’ response

Did the questionnaires ask families how often the children interacted with their

grandparents? The authors state that “we were able to determine the important role of the

grandparents as a stronghold for the maintenance of Russian as the language of family

conversations.” (lines 637-638). To support this statement, it is important to be sure that the

children were in regular contact with their grandparents. While we did not quantify the exact frequency of contact (e.g., once a week or once a year), it was a requirement that all participating families maintain regular interaction between children and their grandparents. In fact, many children visit their grandparents every weekend, while others spend extended periods, such as school vacations, with them. This consistent contact across all participants ensured a solid basis for evaluating the role of grandparents in maintaining Russian as the language of family communication.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revised manuscript has addressed almost all the suggestions I made in the previous draft. I still believe that (1) it is somewhat misleading to include "family language policy" as a central theoretical framework, and (2) it is confusing to have different scales in the survey items (e.g., 0-4, 0-5, 1-4, and 1-5). However, I understand that the author(s) did not agree with me on these points.

I do not have any new suggestions to make for the revised manuscript.

Author Response

Thank you for your thoughtful comments and the time you have invested in reviewing our manuscript. We are truly grateful for your suggestions, which have significantly enhanced the quality of our article.

Concerning the different scales in our survey items, we understand your point about potential confusion. Unfortunately, as the data collection phase is complete, we are unable to modify the scales at this stage.

Thank you once again for your valuable insights, which have been instrumental in improving our work.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revised article is considerably improved. However, some points must be addressed or clarified. The most crucial aspects are:

- Literacy must be clearly determined.

- If the Luchkina's test is not included in the publication, then an example is needed.

Further:

1) lines 214-218: unclear how many parents and where completed their education. There is something wrong with the structure of the sentence.

2) lines 239-242: the authors must make clear what they understand under 'literacy'. From the rest of the paper, it became clear that it is about reading skills, not writing. This must be mentioned. Also important for table 3 and conclusions.

3) Still no examples of Luchkina's cloze test in the Method. What I have seen in the supplementary files, it is quite tough for children aged 10. The question is how reliable the results are regarding children. This must be taken into consideration and discussed in Conclusions.

4) line 599: 'some of them believe'... How many? 

5) lines 716-717: 'we found a positive correlation between the attendance of Russian language classes and enhanced general proficiency in Russian'. > Where can the reader find this positive correlation? It is a very important point and belongs to the RQ3. However, no information is given! This needs to be clarified. 

6) lines 743-746: there is some contradiction between the conclusion given here ('However, only the grandparents assign a certain value of Russian to the future professional career ...') and the lines 645-649 where it is stated that the grandparents assign more emotional value... > this must be clarified or reformulated.

7) line 764: 'However' is used wrongly here. 

Author Response

1) lines 214-218: unclear how many parents and where completed their education. There is something wrong with the structure of the sentence. Thank you for pointing out the confusion regarding the educational backgrounds of the parents. We've clarified this in the revised text. To be precise, 11 parents completed their higher education exclusively in Germany. Additionally, 4 parents pursued their education in both Russia and Germany. Details have been updated accordingly in Section 2.2 of the paper.

2) lines 239-242: the authors must make clear what they understand under 'literacy'. From the rest of the paper, it became clear that it is about reading skills, not writing. This must be mentioned. Also important for table 3 and conclusions. In Section 3.1, “We distinguish between literacy skills, which cover writing and reading, and oral skills, encompassing speaking, pronunciation, and listening comprehension”.

3) Still no examples of Luchkina's cloze test in the Method. What I have seen in the supplementary files, it is quite tough for children aged 10. The question is how reliable the results are regarding children. This must be taken into consideration and discussed in Conclusions. We appreciate your feedback on the reliability of the test for children aged 10. The full version of the test is now included in the appendix for a detailed review. We recognize the concerns about its suitability for this age group; however, we chose a standardized multiple-choice format to ensure consistency across different age groups involved in our project. Although we cannot reference unpublished papers, preliminary analyses suggest a positive correlation between the test results and the accuracy of other tasks within our project.

4) line 599: 'some of them believe'... How many? This information has been added; see Section 3.5

5) lines 716-717: 'we found a positive correlation between the attendance of Russian language classes and enhanced general proficiency in Russian'. > Where can the reader find this positive correlation? It is a very important point and belongs to the RQ3. However, no information is given! This needs to be clarified. See Section 3.4 and Figure 2.

6) lines 743-746: there is some contradiction between the conclusion given here ('However, only the grandparents assign a certain value of Russian to the future professional career ...') and the lines 645-649 where it is stated that the grandparents assign more emotional value... > this must be clarified or reformulated. We have corrected the inconsistency. As noted in section 5, the statement now accurately reflects the alignment between the grandparents' emphasis on emotional value and the intrafamilial importance of Russian, rather than its relevance for professional careers.

7) line 764: 'However' is used wrongly here. We have corrected it.