For the students who learned Russian as a foreign language (L2), there was first an L1 or native language before they began learning Russian, the foreign language, which was typically learned solely outside of the community. Lastly, the heritage speakers of Russian had acquired Russian as an L1, but when they immigrated to the United States, English became their primary language. This left most heritage language students with varying levels of proficiency in their heritage language due to the limited community that spoke Russian.[9]