More information about Level 1
Before starting Level 1 you should be familiar with the very basics of Russian grammar and should have a vocabulary of between 500 and 800 Russian words. It is expected that you consider yourself to be advanced beginner or lower intermediate. This course is not for complete beginners.
The lesson begins with a dialog between two Russian speakers at normal conversational speed. This will test your listening comprehension and your ability to understand full-speed Russian. The dialog is repeated at a slower speed allowing you more chance to understand the Russian. The dialog will then be presented again with an English translation so that you can confirm your understanding. Listening comprehension is perhaps the hardest skill to acquire when learning a foreign language, so we give emphasis to improving this skill.
In Level 1 you will learn about verbal aspects. We give several examples of verbal aspect pairs throughout
Level 1 and the entire course. These are constantly re-iterated to re-enforce them in your mind. You will learn
how to correctly use the pairs делать/сделать, звонить/позвонить, опаздывать/опоздать in all the tenses and with
successful,unsuccessful actions. You will also learn
how to construct the Subjunctive Mood using the verb хотеть in the past, present and future.
Lesson 1 introduces you to Imperatives in the informal and formal form and several examples of the usage. Short
Adjectives are also introduced in this lesson, including examples of exceptions.
You will also learn how to say someone,anyone,no-one,something,anything etc, how to use the word "exactly" and the word "still".
The course gives emphasis on declination of pronouns, since these are often overlooked by beginners.
You will learn all the forms of the question words Who and What in all the cases, learning by example, with several chances to
test your understanding. Finally you will learn how to talk about possession in the past, present and future and how to say that
you don't have something.
All of the examples are taken from scenarios that could happen in real-life. Are you tired of saying boring things like "the river Volga is
very long?" with no pratical usage. This course provides you with useful, ready to use, practical examples that you can use in real conversations.
Here are a few examples: Learn how to ask for help, how to phone a doctor, how to ask whether your partner still loves you,how to apologise for
being late,how to say that something is broken, how to ask what should be done etc.
Lesson 2 continues to introduce further grammar. Learn about Comparatives, and the Conditional Mood and saying that "I would like..." something, and
how to decline the word "this" in all the cases with numerous examples.
It's very important that a learner is able to conjugate Russian verbs, so you will be given plenty of practice conjugating verbs as they are
introduced, checking your responses against the charts in the Companion.