Quote Originally Posted by Chibi
I'm trying to teach myself Russian from "The New Penguin Russian Course: A complete Guide for Beginners" that I got for my birthday...I've been at it constantly for over a week now.

Learning the alphabet was fairly easy for me (although according to what this book says, ё and я are pronounced the same... Oh, that and the fact that it says that щ is pronounced 'shsh'...???).

But that's not my main problem. I'm just having trouble absorbing the vocabulary/grammar. I remember almost nothing that I've read through about grammar, and I've even reread the chapter several times! Pretty much the only words I understand are я, да, нет, это, спасивбо, and вот, plus cognates, like такси.

Are there any tricks or something that I can try to help me absorb the material (better)? The grammar seems very intimidating, but I just assumed that because I spoke English as a first language, where grammar isn't so...carefully paid attention to. (But even grammar isn't that bad, since I understand it completely in German, but things like noun declension seem...difficult to learn, at least to me).

So, as a sort of summary, I guess, my problem is that I can read Russian fairly easily (albeit, rather slowly and very choppy; except for щ and ь), but I just don't understand it, even though I had read the meanings of the words, like, 5 minutes before. I'm really eager to learn Russian, but I'm just finding it rather difficult.

I had a very similar problem. I came to russian from latin, and what I did was I would try to relate the russian cases and their uses to the one's in latin. That's not so much a big foundation on absorbing the material, just spend a few days on a case and then move on. Make sure you know how it's used and all. Also, if I can explain this well enough, try to picturize or imagine how that ending designates it's meaning in the context. It's not easy for everyone to do this, but it really seems to help me when I'm speaking russian and I'm picturizing what I'm trying to say in my head and all. I do the same with latin. One thing I do as a mistake, is that the plural dative case ending -ам/ям is the same as the singular feminine accusative, so sometimes I'll mistake the accusative of something for a dative. If this whole picturization thing is confusing to you, or not appealing, there's other ways, but I fancy this one the most.