How do you teach Russian? What are your Russian lessons like?

[shurale]

I used to be a Russian teacher and I liked it.
Yesterday, out of the blue I received a good offer to teach a student.
The problem is that I am out of practice, yet I want to be good.
Any teacher wants to tell about his/her lessons? (Perhaps it will attract more students when they read your posts). Or anybody wants to praise your Russian teacher and tell about your lessons?

[shurale]

http://masterrussian.com/vocabulary/

[smchilds]

I have studied Russian with a *lot* of people, including 6 (or more?) private teachers in Moscow.
Depending on the level of the student, I would advise you to *speak* as much as possible. Especially if the person is in Moscow, likely they need lessons to communicate, not to do never ending exercises "choose the correct verb, perfect or imperfect." It's not easy to find course books which are as interesting as those made for English language, but I remember using "Rossiya Segodnya" which was not bad and at least offered articles for discussion with exercises. During the lesson write down new words, make sure that you and the student both have a list of the new words, and between lessons you can perhaps make exercises to help practice those words. Another big complaint I had was about teachers who put no effort into making passive vocabulary more active (though teaching English I also have that problem, because many of my students just throw my notes away after the lesson D:

[dindi]

Hi, Shurale!
I’m Russian and I’ve been teaching Russian for two years. It’s not a long time, of course, and I need to study more, but I just wanted to share some of my thoughts about teaching

First of all, I think it’s really difficult to find a good textbook. Usually they are full of boring grammatical exercises and strange old-fashioned texts, such as biographies of Russian writers and scientists who are, for sure, unknown for foreigners. And, moreover, often their design is horrible! So I have to combine different materials to make lessons useful and fun. This is not very good for students as it’s easy to get lost in tons of copies so I try to choose the main textbook which we’ll follow more or less and then to make some additional materials.

Then, I think it’s important to speak a lot. Grammar is a must for proper understanding in Russian but students should make this grammar active. So usually after learning some new rule and making some exercises we make a lot of dialogues trying to improvise as much as possible. Students can easily make exercises but “free speech” is much harder so the only recipe is to speak, speak and speak and, of course, analyse occasionally what you speak about

Also I think it’s useful for students to watch Russian cartoons and movies and to listen to Russian songs (and you can even sing with some of them!). I especially like using cartoons because they are short and you can watch them in a classroom and then you’ll have time to discuss it and to activate new vocabulary. And it’s fun and interesting for students of all ages and levels (maybe except some incredibly serious businessmen)!

If you need any advice in choosing textbook, please feel free to ask. And good luck in teaching Russian!

[alexander rubaylov]

I have 3 years experience of teaching russian language both to russians and foreigners and I realized that you need to do:

- minimum grammatic, maximum speaking
- minimum reading, maximum writing
- minimum learning, maximum playing

Never use any textbooks. Use pictures, movies, songs and your own imagination. Don't be shy. Inspiration and friendly atmosphere is above all!

[puaro]

I have studied Russian with a *lot* of people, including 6 (or more?) private teachers in Moscow.
Depending on the level of the student, I would advise you to *speak* as much as possible. Especially if the person is in Moscow, likely they need lessons to communicate, not to do never ending exercises "choose the correct verb, perfect or imperfect." It's not easy to find course books which are as interesting as those made for English language, but I remember using "Rossiya Segodnya" which was not bad and at least offered articles for discussion with exercises. During the lesson write down new words, make sure that you and the student both have a list of the new words, and between lessons you can perhaps make exercises to help practice those words. Another big complaint I had was about teachers who put no effort into making passive vocabulary more active (though teaching English I also have that problem, because many of my students just throw my notes away after the lesson D:

I have know a guy who can teach Russian very well. He is native speaker Russian. His name is Denis. Skype name good_stud