ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is twofold: first, to describe the structures capturing the relationships among sounds, letters, syllables, words, and phrases in Russian; second, to capitalize on this information and put forward a predictive model aimed at depicting how and when, given the characteristics of Russian language, weaknesses in mastering reading are manifested in Russian children and adults. Correspondingly, the first section of the chapter summarizes relevant important characteristics of Russian as a linguistic entity and the way Russian is taught in schools. The second section presents hypotheses regarding how these characteristics are relevant to the manifestation of reading difficulties in Russian.
