Further reading 11 Solutions to Improve Your Russian Speaking
Russian is an East Slavic language native to the Russians in Eastern Europe. It is an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely throughout the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states. It belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages alongside, and part of the larger Balto-Slavic branch. Russian was the de facto language of the Soviet Union until its dissolution on 26 December 1991. Russian is used in an official capacity or in public life in all the post-Soviet nation-states. Russian is the largest native language in Europe, and the most geographically widespread language in Eurasia, with over 258 million total speakers worldwide. In March 2013, it was announced that Russian is now the second-most used language on the Internet after English. People use the Russian language on 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian is the seventh-most spoken language in the world by a number of native speakers and the eighth-most spoken language in the world by a total number of speakers. The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second-most widespread language on the Internet, after English.
It’s not necessary to study Russian in a classroom or a school anymore. There are a lot of websites that can help you learn Russian online.
Look out for good reliable audio material
Use the audio files that come with courses like Assimil and Colloquial Russian, and try to understand the dialogues (they’re usually dialogues) without the transcript, and then, if necessary, use the transcript to get to a full understanding of the text. You could also engage in a couple of activities such as summarising the dialogue and transcribing the dialogue (slow the speed of the audio down if your software allows it). Using the audio files as a listening resource I will not only help you focus specifically on developing your listening skills but also enable you to speak correctly by listening correctly.
Make the best use of Russian TV and Cinema
Watch Russian movies with English subtitles to stand the context of the movie, subsequently watch the same movie in English with Russian. You could download some apps from the Playstore Apple store to achieve that. I suggest you look for some movies in recent years rather than classics, as most of the languages vary quite a bit and have undergone quite a bit of change from the age of classics to today. You could find these movies on Netflix YouTube Prime video, or anywhere else. The key is to find a movie that has good audio quality and good reliable subtitles. You could also use some video lessons on Russian Pod 101 or listen to some new Russian words on an app called Drops.
Shadowing
It might be a good idea to watch these movies over and over again until you understand what’s being spoken, get a hang of the accent and identify the words being spoken. It is also necessary for a very simple reason that most of the times most of us miss to pick up quite a lot of information when we see e a video for the first time so it is always better to see the video multiple times to be able to grasp everything which is being spoken in the video. Apart of this when you repeatedly watch the video you will also be able to copy the accent and talk just as the speaker is talking also known as the shadowing technique to learn to speak any language. You could also use this technique while listening to Russian songs and sing along this by far would be the fastest technique with which you will learn
Invest some time in writing a journal or a diary to capture a new vocabulary that you may come across while watching television shows or movies
Write down the new words and sentences as you hear them. I would advise pausing the video or audio lesson that you’re listening to and writing down the new sentence or word the way you hear it. For example, I might be watching a Russian movie and while looking at the subtitles I see that the hero of the story just asked ”where is the toilet?”. What I will do at that moment is listen to what he is saying exactly in Russian which sounds like ”Geed-deeyay Tualet? And I will write down this expression together with the English translation.
Readout loud, record yourself and playback
Record yourself reading your notes
After I’ve written down the new words or expressions that I heard in the movie or audio lesson, I will record myself reading them. I usually record myself with my phone or on my laptop.
Speedup
Learning new Russian expressions on websites like LingQ, Russian vocabulary on apps like Drops or listening to the radio in Russian can really speed up your learning process. It’s also a good idea to watch Russian TV series on YouTube ( I’ll give you some awesome YouTube channels for this later in the article).
Immersion
What still remains the best learning method, in my opinion, is to travel to a Russian speaking country like Russia, Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan. There, you’ll be completely immersed in an environment where everyone speaks Russian while self-studying online with my method
Allot Russian learning a dedicated amount if time each day
You’ll obviously need to dedicate a lot of time to the Russian language if you want to master it but memory works in a very funny way. Dedicating half an hour to an hour of studying every day for a week is much more effective than cramming 5-6 hours of intense studying on the weekend. Regular repetition of words and sentences on a daily basis even if it’s only done during a short time span will be much more effective than trying to cram tons of new words at once in your brain.
I found from personal experience that studying Russian for two blocks of 45 minutes every day is what worked best.
Don’t get discouraged or give up due to critical feedback. Work harder.
Your attitude and motivation is of Paramount importance while learning Russian. It is only natural that sometimes it is hard to keep your focus and motivation when starting a new project. I get my hands on fun learning material that will keep me motivated and entertained while I study the language. If the material I use wouldn’t be fun, I would quickly lose motivation and focus.
Practise as much as possible. Put spare time to best use
Download short video lessons from YouTube or a paid Pimsleur language course and put these audio/video lessons on my phone. Spend a bit of time en route work or during return, studying in quick bits and pieces first thing in the morning or every time you walk a dog, standing in a queue, waiting for your meals, or washing the car. There is no shortcut to learning a language but practice.
Practice speaking with Native speakers
Do ensure you look out for conversation partners who are native Russian speakers and could help you learn the language faster by talking to them wherein the correct mistakes that you make while speaking you can find a number of such native Russian speakers at many online websites such as Hello Talk, conversationpartners, languagepartners, Tandem, Italki if you are unable to find a Russian native speaker in and around your neighbourhood.
Finally,
Russian is a rather homogeneous language, in dialectal variation, due to the early political centralization under Moscow’s rule, compulsory education, mass migration from rural to urban areas in the 20th century, and other factors. The standard language is used in written and spoken form almost everywhere in the country, from Kaliningrad and Saint Petersburg in the West to Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the East, the enormous distance between notwithstanding. However, Russian is the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese.
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