Russian Lessons for Beginners

Russian Lessons for Beginners is a free introductory audio course which helps you take your first steps in learning Russian. It comprises 23 lessons with a total of 725 Russian sentences. Each of the 23 lessons consists of a list of sentences with their English translations and a high-quality mp3 file with Russian sentences spoken by Timofey Lugovoy, an educated Russian native speaker from Moscow. The sentences are carefully crafted to ensure steady progression from simple to more advanced grammar.

Benefits of learning Russian with our audio course

• get acquainted with the flow and rhythm of spoken Russian
• learn Russian pronunciation by replaying sentences and repeating after the speaker
• immerse yourself in Russian by listening everywhere, e.g. while driving or surfing the Web
• fill your brain with correct Russian sentence patterns that you can use to build similar sentences of your own
• practice in the privacy of your home, without the stress of a classroom setting

How to learn Russian with our lessons

You can use Russian Lessons for Beginners to learn Russian in several ways:

Background listening

You can make a playlist of the 23 recordings and put them on while you do other things like walking, cleaning up, or driving. Of course, background listening is no replacement for conscious study, but it can help you pick up the rhythm of the Russian language, its sounds, and even some grammar.

Pronunciation practice

Russian Lessons for Beginners is a great tool for learning Russian pronunciation for three reasons: (1) each sentence is spoken clearly by a native speaker of Russian, (2) you can listen to each sentence as many times as it takes to repeat it correctly, (3) you can use it to practice at home, without other people listening to you.

Intensive input

The only difference between you and a native speaker of Russian is that a native speaker's brain has acquired more Russian input (correct Russian sentences). A native Russian has heard Russian sentence patterns and words so many times that he or she intuitively feels what is correct and what "sounds weird".

The realization that exposure to correct sentences in a foreign language is essential to being able to produce your own correct sentences is the basis for the "natural" or "input-based" method of language learning. Russian Lessons for Beginners fits this philosophy perfectly. It provides you with 725 Russian sentences that you can read and listen to repeatedly in order to gain an intuitive knowledge of what "sounds good" in Russian and what doesn't. Listen to our recordings enough times, and the structures they contain will seem like the most natural thing in the world to you, just like the structures in your native language!

Here are some tips for using our lessons to acquire Russian input:

• Try to listen to each lesson as many times as you can — sometimes follow the Russian text while listening, other times try to be focused only on the pronunciation.
• Do not be in a hurry to speak Russian. Relax — if you are a beginner, you should spend a lot of time reading and listening to Russian sentences. If you try to speak before you know what is correct, you are likely to make a lot of mistakes and teach yourself a lot of bad grammar.
• When you feel strong enough to start speaking, try to follow the patterns you've learned from our lessons and other sources of Russian input. If you stray into unfamiliar territory and try to say things that you have not heard said, you will just teach yourself bad grammar.
• Focus your attention on entire sentences, not individual words. It is not enough to know what a word means — you must also know how it connects with other words and in what contexts it can be used.