russian language partner

Proven Course Teaches Russian Quickly with Audio, Video and Mobile Apps

Beginner and advanced levels alike will enjoy RussianPod101, an excellent online and mobile way to learn Russian quickly.

RussianPod101's fun method and modern platform immerse you in the Russian language, giving you just what you need to achieve your goals for travel, business, family and other needs.

RussianPod101 is web and mobile based, giving you a custom Russian Learning Center anywhere. Download podcasts on your iPhone, Android, iPod Touch, iPod or any mp3 player and take them with you for practice and learning on the go.

High-Quality Content for Learning Russian

A key aspect to learning a language is quality content. RussianPod101 creates a steady flow of fresh content covering everything from cultural aspects of Russian to tidbits about navigating in Russia, plus practical information to help you get by.

Beyond Audio and Video

Engage in a combination of audio and video lessons, lesson notes and checklists, transcripts, PDFs, vocabulary training with flashcards and quizzes plus a Russian dictionary, grammar bank, a verb reference, social network and plenty more.

It's simple to get a free lifetime account.

Have Fun Learning Russian Fast

Busuu Russian offers Russian learners a dynamic combination of online lessons, language exchange and mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android.

Busuu offers many of their features for free :) This includes picture-based vocabulary training, writing exercises, reading comprehension exercises, video chat, interactive exams and a bustling community for social exchange in Russian.

The Busuu system allows you to keep a track record of your Russian studies and mark your progress as you complete each lesson. You can work through your lessons at any time, enabling you to fit your study schedule into your daily life however you choose.

Find Friends and Practice or Exchange

Finding friends is easy in the Busuu community! Quickly search and contact other Russian learners to practice with as well as exchange partners to share and trade with. Plus, there's a free video chat function for easy access to language exchanges right in the same interface you're using to learn.

Stay Motivated in Style

In order to keep you motivated, Busuu has created a beautiful interface which allows you to grow and visualize your own language garden as you make progress learning Russian. If you are interested in learning more than one language, you will have a tree for each language that sprouts and shoots to the sky as you progress through the lessons and levels. It's quite a thrill to see this grow and know it's a visual representation of your language skills!

Free Russian Mobile App for iOS and Android

Busuu offers free mobile apps for learning Russian on the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android. The free app takes you through the basics for getting around, and is especially useful while traveling.

Summary

Russian-Flashcards.com is a fast-loading, useful site for Russian learners to manage and practice vocabulary lists (words and sentences). There are many existing word and sentence lists created by other users that you can snag and use right away. You can also create your own lists and sentences on-the-fly and test yourself until you know them all. As a result, this resource works for Russian students of all levels, beginner to advanced. The self-testing is done via built-in flashcard software that you control.

The website has an integrated dictionary that gives explanations of terms and includes examples of how these are used in real sentences. In addition, when you view a sentence, you can scroll over the words and view annotations. NB: You can copy and paste any Russian text you want into the site's Text Analyzer and it provides you with what you see below (see grey scroll-over pop-up in image for glosses).

Something I have found incredibly useful is the Sentence of the Day email that you can subscribe to on the site. This sends a different sentence every day and is complete with a translation of the sentence, plus a link to hear a native speaker say the sentence.

If you upgrade to a premuim membership (~$5/month) you can also hear audio for the sentence. In fact, the only thing you cannot do without a membership is hear the audio on the site. Other than that, it is full-featured and incredibly quick and helpful for learning Russian through memorizing words/sentences and their constituents.

Bravo Oliver for this excellent site and keep up the great work!

From Website

Study Russian from Home

Introduction

Since our first flashcard website started in 2005 a lot of time has been invested to design an efficient system which enables you to learn a new language in the shortest time possible. Make sure to read this introduction carefully so you understand how the system works. Once you know how this website works and you use it regularly it will become an important tool to learn Russian. Ideally make time each day for 2 or 3 sessions a day, each lasting about 10 - 15 minutes.

Once you have created your own account you can set up your own word list. You can either add words manually or automatically to your own word list.

Automatic Mode

If you choose this mode then the system will choose random words for you to practice. Within the "Automatic Mode" there are two different choices. The first is "completely random words" and the second is "frequent words first". Obviously if you are a beginner you should focus on those frequent words first, if you chose the level "Complete Newbie", "Basic" or "Intermediate" the system will just do that. If you chose the level "Upper Intermediate" or "Advanced" completely random words will be added to your word list.

Manual Mode

If you would like more control over which words you learn switch to the "Manual Mode". In this mode you choose which words you want to learn and not the system. There are a few ways to add words manually. The first is to use the search function in the navigation bar on the left-hand side. You can search for Russian or English words. On the result page every found word has an "Add Word" link next to it. Click it to add this word to your personal list. After you click it the link text will change to "Remove Word", so you can immediately remove the word from your list if you have added it by mistake.

The second way to add words manually is to click the link "Add new Words" in the navigation. This will show random words for you to add.

Finally you can add words by clicking on "Public Word Lists". These public lists normally have a common theme, like "Animals", "Computer", "Fruits", etc. You can either pick some words of these public lists or copy the whole list.

By default you are in the "Automatic Mode". If you do not want to add words automatically you can change this in the settings. In the "Automatic Mode" you can also add words manually.

The Loop

The main problem of learning new words is that over time word lists grow very big. This means that the learner feels overwhelmed and the time between word repetitions becomes too long. To solve this problem a so-called "Loop" is used.

The Loop consists of a subset of only 30 words out of your word list. This means you can concentrate on a few words only, until you have memorized them properly. To keep a flashcard in the loop click on the "Loop" button.

If you have become familiar with a new word which is in the Loop click on "1 day", "7 days", "30 days" etc. Which means that the word will be shown only after the indicated time has passed. If you know a word very well click on "30 Days" or "3 Months" so the word will be shown only after a long time. After the indicated time has passed the word will be put into the Queue.

Once you remove a word from the Loop another one will be put in the Loop. The system will first check if there are any words in the "Queue". If the Queue is empty and you are in "Automatic Mode" the system will choose a new word for you and add it to your word list and into the Loop. If you are in the "Manual Mode" the system will tell you that you need to add more words in order to continue. It is important not to let the queue grow too big, otherwise the system will become increasingly inefficient. Your every day task is to clear the queue and add 5 to 10 new words to your list.

If you click "Remove" then the word will be removed from your word list. "Block" will do the same except that it will also prevent the word from coming back in the "Automatic Mode" where the system chooses words for you. By default there are 30 words in the loop. You can change the number of words in the loop in the settings.

Word Lists

If the Loop system sounds too complicated to you, then you can also set up simple word lists. To do this click on "[Manage Lists]" in the navigation. Then click on "[Add List]" to create a new list. If you want to share this word list with other users select the box "Public List". If you want to immediately add new words to this list select "Also Activate". You can create as many lists as you want. In the navigation bar you can always see which list is active at the moment. Words will be added to the currently active list.

Visit Russian-Flashcards.com

Summary

One of the largest and fastest-growing online social language learning networks, italki.com offers a sophisticated user interface, a large and growing user base, a shared file database of lessons and helpful info as well as a great list of language-learning resources (you have to join to access them fully).

This is a great place to meet people for a language exchange over VoIP (Skype, Gizmo, etc.) and with instant messaging. You can meet and maintain language study exchanges with people from all over the world!

An excellent advantage of italki.com over some other social language learning networks is that their site has been localized in Arabic, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, making it easier to use the site if your native language is not English.

This site is an excellent way to meet, learn, teach and exchange cultural information with new folks from around the world.

If you are unfamiliar with Skype, click on the image below to find out more about making calls to anywhere in the world for free using any computer! It's the perfect way to connect and speak with language partners anywhere for free.

From Website

"What's italki?

italki is a language learning community. It's main goal is to help people learn languages.

At italki you can:

* Find language partners (language exchange, study buddies, teachers)
* Communicated with them (using Skype, MSN, Yahoo, Talkbox, etc.)
* Find language resources (podcasts, websites, videos, dictionaries, books, etc.)
* Participate in language forums

By creating a profile, you can find and be found by other people who are interested in helping you learn languages. Along the way, we're sure you'll make some friends and learn about foreign cultures. By voting on language resources, you can give recommendations and find out the best tools to help you learn a language. By participating in the learning community, you can also join discussions, ask questions, and help people trying to learn your language.

italki was developed by a company called Talk da Talk. Talk da Talk is based in Shanghai, China, and is dedicated to teaching English experientially.? They believe using a foreign language is the only way to really learn it.

We hope italki helps you learn a foreign language and make new friends!

What is language exchange?

Language exchange is when two people take turns speaking the other person's native language. By doing this, both sides get a chance to practice speaking the language they want to learn. We recommend dividing the time between the languages evenly.

For example:

* John speaks English and wants to learn Chinese
* John does a search to find Lily, a Chinese woman who wants to study English
* John and Lily decide to do a language exchange for 30 minutes
* For 15 minutes John and Lily only speak Chinese
* For 15 minutes John and Lily only speak English

There are many ways to arrange a language exchange, and there is no one right way to do it. Here are our final recommendations:

* be respectful
* don't be afraid of making mistakes
* have fun!

What is a language learning community?

A language learning community is a group of people that are dedicated to learning languages. When you study in a language school, you can rely on your classmates and your teacher to help you learn the language.

* You can ask questions of your teacher about "how do you say...".
* You can ask your classmates "which dictionary or textbook or CD is the best?"
* You also can ask them if they know anyone who can help with language practice

Unfortunately, not everybody has time, money, or chance to enroll in a language school.

Luckily, with the internet now the whole world can be your language learning community.Now it doesn't matter where you live. It doesn't matter if there is no language school and there are no foreigners living in your city. Now if you have an internet connection, you can find a native speaker of almost any language and talk with them for free. With internet phone programs like Skype, and chat programs like MSN, Yahoo messenger, you can communicate with people living on the other side of the world. Join our forum and discuss with other community members your experiences learning languages.

If you're interested in learning languages, try joining italki's language learning community. We hope you'll learn as well as contribute to it.
What are language resources?

Language resources are the tools you need to learn a language. That includes:

* Podcasts
* Videos
* Websites
* Books
* CD / MP3
* Dictionaries ... and more

Every language student needs these tools to learn a language. But did you ever wonder if there were better materials? Did you ever wonder if there was a better textbook? Or if there was a better electronic dictionary??
In addition, with the internet, there are many new and useful sites. There are amazing new podcasts, and websites with flashcards, or software programs, that have made learning much easier than even a few years ago. We hope this part of the website allows you to find the best tools, and gives you a chance to share your knowledge of resources that you found useful."

Link

Visit italki.com

Summary

If you don't know about Wikipedia, now is the time to find out! Especially since it is so useful in learning languages.

Wikipedia is the "Free Encyclopedia", a collectively-authored, dynamic, online encyclopedia that is free not only as in price, but also as in freedom. This means that the content you find anywhere on Wikipedia is free and open in the Public Domain. You can reproduce, redistribute and rehash the information there. This is empowered by the GNU Free Documentation License. This same license protects and empowers the content on Free Language! (How?)

This particular resource links to the Wikipedia entry on the Russian language. This entry contains loads of information for the curious reader as well as for the serious Russian language learner, including historical and linguistic data.

Use this resource to become familiar with the Russian language and its context in today's world, to discover facts and linguistic data about Russian and its many varieties, access further information about and resources for learning Russian, and much more.

From Resource

Russian (русский язык), transliteration: Russkiy yazyk, [ˈruskʲɪj jɪˈzɨk]) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three (or, according to some authorities, four) living members of the East Slavic languages; the others being Belarusian and Ukrainian (and possibly Rusyn, often considered a dialect of Ukrainian).

Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century onwards. While Russian preserves much of East Slavonic grammar and a Common Slavonic word base, modern Russian exhibits a large stock of borrowed international vocabulary for politics, science, and technology. Due to the status of the Soviet Union as a superpower, Russian had great political importance in the 20th century. Hence, the language is still one of the official languages of the United Nations.

Russian has palatal secondary articulation of consonants, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found in almost all consonant phonemes and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels, which is not entirely unlike that of English. Stress in Russian is generally quite unpredictable and can be placed on almost any syllable. Syllabic stress is one of the most difficult aspects for foreign language learners.

Link

Visit "Russian Language" on Wikipedia.

License

GNU Free Documentation License