• How is the content organized?
• How often do you add new material?
• I am an absolute beginner, what can you recommend?
• I have some experience studying Russian, how can I go on?
• I am a businessman, which units can you recommend?
• I want to “liven up” my Russian, how can I do this?
• I want to visit Russia, where can you recommend me to go?
• I am a very busy person and I don’t have time to sit down and study. What can I do?
• Learning Russian for me is just a sort of hobby. Are there any games on the site?
• I want to improve my Russian to read Russian news, what can you recommend?
• How do I listen to audio on your site?
• How do I download from your site?
• I want to ask questions and leave comments. How can I do this?
• Can I buy your Learning Russian products?
****************************************************************************************************
• What is the methodology?
LISTEN AND UNDERSTAND, READ AND SPEAK, PLAY – JUST ENJOY LEARNING - this is the main concept behind our project for learners of Russian.
Being specially developed for Russian learners from beginner to advanced levels, this online course combines fun with easy-to-use technology and offers a flexible units structure. It also provides a wide range of vocabulary articles wherever it is possible to help students reach the level of initial lexis competency when they can read, listen and understand native speakers instantly without translation. To reach this level, students need to form the habit of listening (reading) - understanding, but not listening (reading) – translating – understanding. How can they do that? First of all, it is a matter of memorizing. There are a lot of techniques to memorize words. We do not re-invent the wheel when say that memorizing is the most effective when you see the word, hear it and say at the same time, i.e. you learn the language with your ears rather than your eyes. That is why the primary concern of our course is to focus on listening and understanding while reading; and most of the texts and vocabulary articles are also provided as audio recordings. In other words, the main principles of our methodology are as follows: an image - a word – a sound –- understanding - playing– speaking.
• How is the content organized?
The “Have Fun with Russian” site is intended to help you start or improve your learning of the Russian language. Throughout the site you will find a lot of games, quizzes, grammar, vocabulary and audio, that will make learning Russian easy.
There are 12 units on the site:
• Word of the day
• How to say it
• Audio and Pictures Games
• Quizzes
• Russian Grammar
• Grammar & Audio
• Dialogues
• Business in Russia
• Russian News
• Travel in Russia
• Russian Rock
• Idioms, proverbs and sayings
You can choose among any of these units depending on your personal interests, goals and objectives as well as the level of Russian you have.
In addition, you will find detailed grammar tables which can be used as references when doing some of the exercises.
• How often do you inject the new material?
The site is updated once a month. The news with exercises, How to say it podcast and “Idioms, proverbs and sayings” are updated every fortnight. And, by definition, every day you can learn a new word.
• What are the levels?
The “Have Fun with Russian” course is grouped into six levels for convenience: Absolute Beginner, Elementary, Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate, Upper-Intermediate and Advanced. Each unit has its own level:
• Absolute beginner – “Word of the day”, “How to say it”;
• Elementary – “Audio & Pictures Games” and “Quizzes”.
These units are developed to accumulate the basic lexis, and mostly designed as games.
• Pre-intermediate – “Grammar & Audio”, “Dialogues”
• Intermediate – “Business in Russia”, “Travel in Russia”
• Upper-Intermediate - “Russian rock”, “Idioms”
• Advanced – “Russian News”
Although such units as “Business”, “Travel in Russia”, “Russian rock” and “Idioms, Proverbs and Sayings” are aimed at Intermediate – Upper-Intermediate levels students and provide special focus on areas such as idioms and collocations, we suggest considering them as the Cross levels (or All levels) units, bearing in mind that they are of cultural and educational nature, and more and more expat- specialists working in Russia want to show off their colloquial Russian from the very beginner’s level.
The Advances level consists of the “Russian News” unit which includes a wide variety of thought-provoking authentic RIA Novosti articles. This unit is targeted at high language level students, but the lower level students may also find it interesting because all the articles go along with audio and vocabulary as well as interactive exercises.
However, all these levels' division is rather optional and serves for better navigation across the course.
If you feel confident enough to move on to another level, please, do so: the devil is not so terrible as he is painted! (idiom)
• I am an absolute beginner, what can you recommend?
If you don’t know a single Russian word, but are eager to speak and understand Russian, you’d better start with the “Word of the day”, or listen to the podcast series “How to say it”, which are specially developed for Absolute Beginners and updated every two weeks. You also can visit “Audio & Pictures Games” and test yourself with “Quizzes”.
• I have some experience learning Russian, how can I go on?
If you have some experience learning Russian, we recommend searching on the site to find what you like most and what matches your level.
You can study “Business in Russia”, “Travel in Russia”, “Russian rock” and “Idioms, Proverbs and Sayings” at any levels, because these units are supplied with the vocabulary articles, translation and audio. Moreover, it will broaden your outlook wonderfully while learning Russian culture and traditions as well as geography and the language.
• I am a businessman, which units can you recommend?
“Have Fun with Russian” includes the themed unit: “Business in Russia”. This is a good resource for those who want to find out the peculiarities of the Russian economy and learn business vocabulary. The unit consists of two sections: “Words in business” and “The Business Story”, which is an article on economy with vocabulary and audio. Every month you can learn new material.
• I read Russian quite well, but still have some difficulties with listening and comprehension, especially when I speak on the phone. What should I do?
There is the only one way to improve your listening and comprehension: if you want to speak a language, you should not only read and translate but also listen and speak. You can also download audio files, or you can read and listen simultaneously. If you want to improve your speaking, it would be a good idea to say what you read and listen to.
Sometimes you do not understand Russian native speakers when they speak very fast. To overcome this kind of difficulty some articles are read at a regular pace, but info from the “Dialogues” is also available in two options: slow and fast. Try to read and listen to the article at a slow pace first, check your understanding, and then read the same article with faster pace. Cover the text and try to listen again. If you understand it, you have achieved a very good result. Congratulations!
• I want to “liven up” my Russian, how can I do this?
If you want to speak Russian fluently like native speakers, if you want to use the real “live” Russian but not the language from the exercise books, we recommend you to learn it through the “Dialogues”, “Russian rock”, “How to say it”, “Russian News”, and, of course, “Idioms, Proverbs and Sayings”.
The “Dialogues” unit is a story of two young people, an American and a Russian girl, who met in Moscow. They work for the same company, and this story may turn into a love story very soon. Each dialogue is supported by audio and info article about life and work in Russia, in Moscow. Info articles are available in two paces (slow and regular) to further improve your listening and comprehension of the Russian language.
“Russian rock” is another good way to enrich your vocabulary of modern, up-to-date Russian. The words from songs are easy to learn because they follow the rhythm and music. Besides, some western people are surprised to know that in Russia we have not only classical or folk music, but rock-n-roll as well. You can listen and enjoy Russian rock, and may discover a different Russia, free of politic
“How to say it” is specially developed for Absolute beginner students. These podcasts help you polish your spoken Russian. Listen to them and practice everyday phrases.
The “Russian News” unit includes a wide variety of thought-provoking authentic RIA Novosti articles. This unit is aimed at students with a high language level, but the lower level students may find it interesting because the articles are supported by audio and vocabulary. After reading the articles you can do some more interactive exercises to improve your Russian.
“Idioms, Proverbs and Sayings” combines all the variety, beauty and humor of the Russian language. After listening and reading an idiom and the example of its usage in spoken language, you can do the exercises to make sure that you learn it forever.
• I want to visit Russia, where can you recommend me to go?
“Travel in Russia” is another key section of this project. You can read about Russian history and geography, and make your own choice where to go. Tourists usually visit Moscow or St.-Petersburg first. The Russian text in the unit is accompanied by a translation, audio, and a slide show, so you can even take virtual tours of many outstanding places of Russia.
• I am a very busy person and I don’t have time to sit down and study. What can I do?
You can simply download the materials you need for your level or objective. Listening material should be understandable. If you don’t understand, you will not make progress, so you will not improve. That is why, if you are at the beginner or elementary level, we recommend you to start with “How to say it” podcast series, then go on to “Grammar &Audio” and “Dialogues”.
• I have been learning Russian Grammar for many years. I am fed up with all these cases and endings. Is there a more effective way to study it?
Yes, you are right. Grammar seems to be the most difficult part of the language for foreigners to grasp.
In our course “Have Fun with Russian” we try to make it easy following the concept: “look – listen – speak”. Here you can find a special unit “Russian Grammar” – detailed grammar tables for nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs. The cases are drawn as a cube with six sides. Each case is the cube’s side of the certain color, e.g. the accusative case is always red, prepositional is green etc.
All the schemes from the “Grammar & Audio” unit are similar to the tables from the “big” Grammar, i.e. this is Russian Grammar “in miniature”, which is supported by texts and audio.
When you study Russian, it is very important to learn not only the meaning of the word but also how this word is declined, or changes its ending according to the case. Moreover, you should learn the case of the noun which goes after the verb, and what the forms of the verb are. All this is demonstrated in “Grammar & Audio”. You can press the case and start listening to the audio clips that make it easier to remember texts and visual content. You can also do some interactive exercises from the “Russian News” section to further train your grammar competence.
You can learn the nominative case of each noun in the “Word of the day” unit. The forms of the verbs can be studied in “Audio and Pictures Games” – “Actions”. Then, we recommend you to listen to the audio clips from “Grammar & Audio”. It would be a good idea to start listening to the accusative case, then dative, to go on with instrumental and prepositional, and finally, genitive. You don’t need to remember the endings of the cases by heart. If you have a lot of understandable and repetitive listening, you’ll soon start speaking fluently without thinking of the grammar rules.
We are also planning to implement an interactive game “Russian Case Roulette” for further studying the Russian case forms.
We also thank A. F. Dreomov, whose genius “case’s cube” idea inspired us to create this unit.
• Learning Russian for me is just a sort of hobby. Are there any games on the site?
Yes, there are a lot of lexis-grammar games available on the site. Throughout the site you can find “Audio and Pictures Games” as well as “Quizzes” where you can test different kinds of knowledge, not only the linguistic ones. You also can do interactive exercises from the units “Idioms, Proverbs and Sayings” and “Russian News”. If you like music, you can search in the “Russian rock” unit to find and listen to some of the Russian rock songs. You may also find it interesting to virtually “Travel in Russia”.
• I want to improve my Russian to read Russian news, what can you recommend?
If you want to polish your news lexis, “Russian News” is just the thing for you. This unit includes a wide variety of thought-provoking authentic RIA Novosti articles and is targeted at the students with a high language level, but the lower level students may also find it interesting because all the articles go along with audio and vocabulary as well as interactive exercises. The articles and audio are available to download.
• How do I listen to audio on your site?
All the material from our site is supported by audio which is available in different formats, streaming and downloadable. Info articles from the “Dialogues” unit are available in two paces: slow and fast to further improve your listening and comprehension of the Russian language.
• How do I download from your site?
You will be able to download the file with right-clicking and choosing the link “Save target as”.
• I want to ask questions and leave the comments. How can I do this?
The project’s author Zlata Karlova will answer users’ questions and offer advice on various aspects of the language. The project will soon launch a Facebook page too.
If you want to ask Zlata on the site, you should visit the page “The author”, register, and ask questions or leave a message.
• Can I buy your “Learning Russian – Have Fun with Russian” products or some other RIA NOVOSTI products?
No, we do not produce commercial Learning Russian products ourselves. However some RIA Novosti materials (news, photo, video, infographics) are available through http://ria.ru/docs/products/index.html, or http://visualrian.ru/en/
Contact us
Phone: +7 495 637 3519
E-mail: info@rian.ru
