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Hello, I am new to Russian, literally been learning it for about 5 days now, and I must say, I hate Rosetta stone. . . the first few lesson's were OK, but it took forever to teach anything useful, and I've ground to a halt in Unit two due to too many new concepts at once and very vague images, so I would like to know, what's the best program for learning to listen to, and speak, Russian? I think it would be far easier to learn the proper spelling and grammar after I can talk normally, after all, that's how we do it as children. Anyways, please tell me what worked best for you, or what you'd suggest. Oh, and I have a computer, but no iphone or anything, so don't tell me whether or not "there's an app for that", and if possible try to stick with cheaper programs. Thanks in advance everyone!

Well, I posted a topic recently with a zillion resources of russian (Don't know which one is better): viewtopic.php?f=13&t=20747

What I Know, from what I studied (still a begginer) is that some courses are good.

Piemsleur (although everyone here say it's not good) it's very good for learning the basics of the language, how to speak properly (aside from the price, is the best for speaking skills).
Teach yourself or assimil or coloquial russian or linguaphone, are all very similar (even in price), and also good courses, they teach you basics, some culture, and some conversations.
FSI courses (http://www.fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php) is very good (considering it is free), can also help you learn if you REALLY wants to learn russian, the best is begin with this, to make sure you won't spend money and give-up after few days.

Audiobooks: On the internet, is easy to find audiobooks and movies in russian, is you find the book, audiobook, movie, and book in your language, you can use this to enhance your skills, although it's necessary a more advanced skill to do this...

Hope I helped, there are several other courses in my post, but till now those I quoted are the more useful I found...