Russian Language
Alphabet, grammar, cases, verbs and conversation
This course teaches Russian from zero: starting with the Cyrillic alphabet and pronunciation, you will move on to noun gender, the six cases, adjectives, verbs, aspect and verbs of motion, numbers, sentence building, spelling and punctuation. Every lesson has tables of forms, flashcards and dialogues with audio, memory tricks and warnings about the mistakes learners make most often. The university module covers the official-business style and an introduction to Russian literature.
Course content
First steps
BeginnerThe Cyrillic alphabet and pronunciation, greetings, personal pronouns, the verb быть, noun gender and plurals.
- 1The Cyrillic alphabet and pronunciationLearn to read the 33 letters of the Russian alphabet, hard and soft consonants, the signs ь and ъ, stress and how unstressed vowels are pronounced.Grades 2–516 min
- 2Greetings, personal pronouns and the verb бытьLearn to greet people and introduce yourself in Russian, the difference between ты and вы, the personal pronouns and how быть (to be) works in the present, past and future.Grades 2–516 min
- 3Nouns: gender and numberLearn to recognise the three genders of Russian nouns by their endings, handle nouns in ь, and form regular and irregular plurals.Grades 3–616 min
The six cases and adjectives
IntermediateThe six noun cases with their questions, endings and prepositions, and adjective agreement.
- 4Cases: the nominative and the prepositional (где?)Meet the six Russian cases and their questions, and use the prepositional case with в, на and о to say where something is and what you are talking about.Grades 5–717 min
- 5The accusative and the genitiveUse the accusative (кого? что? куда?) for direct objects and direction, and the genitive (кого? чего?) for possession, absence, quantity and “from”; master the structure у меня есть / нет.Grades 5–818 min
- 6The dative and the instrumental; all cases togetherUse the dative (кому? чему?) for the receiver, age and “I like”, and the instrumental (кем? чем?) for tools, company and professions; then review the full table of all six cases.Grades 6–818 min
- 7Adjectives and agreementLearn how adjectives agree with nouns in gender, number and case, plus possessive and demonstrative pronouns, adjective declension, short forms and comparison.Grades 5–717 min
The verb
IntermediateConjugations I and II, present, past and future, aspect and verbs of motion.
- 8Verbs: conjugations and tensesLearn the two Russian conjugations, the person endings of the present tense, the gender endings of the past tense and how to form the future.Grades 5–718 min
- 9Verb aspect and verbs of motionLearn to tell the imperfective (НСВ) from the perfective (СВ), key aspect pairs, how aspect shapes the tenses, the verbs идти/ходить and ехать/ездить, and the prepositions for где? куда? откуда?Grades 8–1120 min
Sentences, writing and communication
AdvancedWord order and conjunctions, spelling rules and punctuation, numbers, time and everyday dialogues.
- 10Sentences: word order, conjunctions and commasLearn how Russian word order works, how to build questions and negatives, the main conjunctions (и, а, но, что, потому что, который…) and the comma rules of complex sentences.Grades 8–1018 min
- 11Spelling rules and punctuation basicsLearn the rules жи-ши, ча-ща, чу-щу, how to check unstressed vowels and paired consonants, why не is written apart from verbs, the difference between -тся and -ться, and basic commas and dashes.Grades 5–817 min
- 12Numbers, time and everyday conversationsLearn Russian numbers, the noun form after a number (1 / 2–4 / 5+), how to tell the time and name the days, and use them in dialogues about school, family, the city and shopping.Grades 6–920 min
Stylistics and literature
UniversityFunctional styles, official-business documents and an introduction to Russian literature.
- 13Stylistics and the official-business styleStudy the functional styles of Russian, the features and set phrases of the official-business style, how to write an application (заявление), an explanatory note (объяснительная) and a business letter, and the typical grammar and style traps.25 min
- 14Introduction to Russian literatureExplore the main periods of Russian literature (the Golden and Silver Ages), Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Chekhov and other classics, literary kinds and genres, figures of speech, verse metres and a plan for analysing a text.25 min