Quote Originally Posted by Throbert McGee View Post

But a lot of the specific criticisms weren't a surprise to me -- I know that I have trouble with some of the soft consonants, and I tend to pronounce them "hard" unless I'm very, very focused. (I might be able to pronounce the ль properly if I were saying ONLY the word "сильный", but it's more difficult when the word is in a sentence.)
in this case, probably your 'hardness' is not a big deal, if one speaks to Russians a considerable amount of time one might improve this quickly... natural rhythm can be easily achieved if one lives in Russia for several months and speaks to people...