Thread: The Lull After Rosetta Stone

My favorite Cake song is Long Line of Cars on this CD:

(you can listen to part of it here ...song eight)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... c&n=507846

I think the music is funny.

Download some Russian books here
http://www.fictionbook.ru/

Listen to Russkoe Radio at http://www.rusradio.ru

When you hear a song that you like, write down a phrase or two from the lyrics and use http://www.rambler.ru to find the full lyrics on the web. The lyrics page will also identify the song and the artist. When I did this I went to http://www.allofmp3.com and I bought the album containing the song that I liked. In many cases, you hear newly released songs and they are only available on a collected hits album.

The other thing to do is to buy lots of Russian films and DVDs. To start with, get DVDs with English subtitles. Then graduate to DVDs with Russian subtitles. After that, branch out into whatever types of films interest you. This is almost as good as visiting Russia.

Every day, read the news on the web at sites like http://www.1tv.ru and http://www.izvestiya.ru and http://www.kp.ru
At the beginning, try to read stories about news items that you are familiar with because that way you can learn new words from the context without the dictionary. After a few months you will find yourself using the dictionary less and less because the vocabulary of news stories is somewhat repetitive. You can become fluent at reading the news much sooner than you can become fluent at reading novels.

Also, look for graded readers. These contain abridged versions of Russian texts along with a glossary in the book. It is less hassle to look up words in a glossary than in a dictionary. Also, because they are graded to a certain level, you normally only need to learn one or two new words in any single sentence. This means that the rest of the words in the sentence give you context and this context is often enough to tell you the meaning of the word.

Harry Potter is the right idea. I have learned French and German by reading books for 10-14 year olds because they are edited so that new words are explained by the context. You might try Tanya Grotter and the Magic Contrabasoon. Also, fairy tales because you may already know the stories.