Don’t Forget Your Russian is an easy-to-navigate collection of Russian language learning resources. Use the navigation bar at the top of the page to access resources for listening, reading, grammar, learning strategies, and more.
Tag Archives: listening
3ears
3ears is a database of Russian-language songs, TV show excerpts, and other video clips. A transcript appears below each video, and each word in the transcript is highlighted when it is spoken or sang in the video. You can also go to the exact point in the video where a word appears by clicking it. To see the definition, declension or conjugation, and other example usages of a word, drag it to the side of the screen. 3ears is particularly useful for catching all the words in a sitcom (there are many included on the site), film, or any other video with lots of quickly spoken conversational dialogue.
Луч света
If you are interested in improving your ability to understand Russian news reports, check out Луч света. Each post contains a video from a Russian news outlet, a paragraph of the necessary background information (in English), notes on language, and transcripts with English translations. First, watch the clip to see how much you comprehend. Then refer to the supplementary materials and follow along with the transcript as you listen.
Cornell University On-line Course Materials
The Russian Language Program at Cornell University has produced several excellent online resources for learners of Russian. Mini-Videos for Learners of Intermediate Russian consists of 91 excerpts from the comedy show “6 кадров”, accompanied by vocabulary help and transcripts. The Anthrax Diaries is a 30-minute documentary about the Soviet biological weapons program, with transcripts and English translations. Lora’s Dialogs is a beginner’s course with short dialogs (audio recordings), transcripts, grammar notes, and substitution exercises. A Collocational Russian-English Dictionary of the Human Body is an interactive on-line dictionary that lists thousands of phrases for describing the appearance, movements, moods, injuries, etc. of human beings. Additionally, there are several pages that accompany Russian films with transcripts, key vocabulary, and summaries: Папа, Благословите женщину, Водитель для Веры, and Олигарх.
Say it in Russian Video Podcast
Say it in Russian is a video podcast site for learners of Russian at all levels. Links to videos (organized by ACTFL proficiency level) are given with accompanying exercises, cultural and linguistic commentary, and occasionally transcriptions. The videos include video podcasts developed by the creator of the site, as well as authentic videos available on YouTube (songs, cartoons, news and TV clips, and others). Say it in Russian is an excellent resource for learners looking to improve their listening skills with authentic, culturally relevant videos.
Rockin’ Russian
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
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!
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.
MOSKVA.FM
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).
Russian Language Learning on the Web
The University of Sussex’s Russian Language Learning on the Web contains glossed works by Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy and Blok, complete with: historical background and literary criticism in English; a side-by-side English-Russian translation; comprehension, vocabulary and grammar exercises; grammatical explanations; audio recordings of the texts; and videos of native speakers discussing the texts.
Russian Portal 