Rockin’ Russian is an interactive site from COERLL at UT-Austin featuring ten subtitled (in Russian and English) music videos accompanied by extensive exercises. There are pre-listening, during listening, and post-listening exercises for all levels – novice, intermediate, advanced, and superior. The multiple-choice exercises focus on reading and listening comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary related to the songs.
Русский язык в песнях is a downloadable resource from the Русский мир fund that allows users to interact with popular Russian songs. Each module includes song audio, lyrics, historical and linguistic commentary, and exercises focusing on grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation.
Время говорить по-русски! is a Russian instructional site developed by the Centre for International Education at Moscow State University for learners seeking to pass the elementary level of the TORFL (Test of Russian as a Foreign Language). There are 10 levels, each containing subtitled claymation video introductions to the topic, grammatical explanations, cultural information, exercises, tests, and supplemental reading and audio texts.
Learn Russian is an interactive language learning website from the news site RT. The 30 comprehensive lessons include dialogues with audio, exercises, grammatical explanations, and tests. The site also contains sections on the alphabet, pronunciation, and grammar tables.
Яндекс карты is the Russian answer to Google Maps. Moscow has the most detailed maps, which include live traffic, webcams, panoramic street view, public transport routes, local businesses, photos, map/satellite/hybrid views – even a layer that shows the path of Gagarin’s first flight into space, complete with a transcript of his transmissions. There’s also a link to a map of the Moscow metro, where you can find out how to get from one station to another, complete with the number of stops, transfers, and approximate travel time.
This морфологический анализ site will conjugate or decline any inflected Russian word that you input, as well as provide a dictionary definition. It will also give verb participle forms and gerunds. Use it to double-check your endings or to figure out tricky declensions and verb conjugations. Indeclinable words are noted as such.
MOSKVA.FM is the best resource I’ve found for listening to Russian radio online. Stream popular radio stations (Эхо Москвы, Наше радио, Русское радио, and many more), listen to archived programs (news, horoscopes, countdowns), and browse the charts (хит-парады). The interface is what really sets MOSKVA.FM apart: it shows what song is playing, a box for user comments, and a visual timeline of the songs and programs that have aired – it even notes each song’s number of rotations. Also, click “текст песни” to bring up lyrics in the window as a song plays. More features are available for registered users (including the ability to make playlists).
