Introduction:

On the list of the most widely spoken languages globally, Russian comes eighth. Believe it or not, it’s the most spoken language in Europe. Russia is a mind-bogglingly large country. Only about 5 percent of Russians have a command of English, and in the majority of Russian cities, you’ll find almost no signs written in the Latin alphabet.

Russian is one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn, owing in part to its complex grammatical structure. And the Cyrillic alphabet seems so foreign that it’s enough to put some people off of learning the language. It’s actually not nearly as scary as it looks. Remember — you can tackle it in two days. And when you do learn it, you’ll feel a real sense of accomplishment! In this blog, we’ll discuss some of the ways through which you can get better at your Russian listening skills:

1. Practice Active Listening – Listen to spoken Russian by using audio recordings (like mp3s) or videos. Listen one time through and write down what you think you heard. Then replay the audio and listen again. If you can find transcripts to accompany the audio, you can check what you think you heard with what’s written. If you don’t have a transcript, try asking an instructor or native speaker to check your answers.
2. Practice Pronunciation – Practicing pronunciation is an important but undervalued skill in language learning.  You might never sound “fluent”, but you should push yourself.  If you neglect pronunciation, native speakers will have a hard time understanding you and you’ll just get discouraged. Improving your accent will affect your confidence and your ability to be understood by others. Plus, learning the correct pronunciation will make the language sound less foreign when you hear it.
3. Practice active Listening – One of the best ways to practice listening is to, well, listen to your target language. But this doesn’t mean putting on some music and listening to it in the background as you do other things. You need to practice active listening. Get your hands on a recording of spoken language. You can use a movie, news broadcast, or podcast. You can even try subscribing to a Youtube channel. Listen to a segment of the audio and do your best to write down what you hear.
4. Make it a Habit – Combine listening exercises and pronunciation drills for your own personal “Russian boot camp”. If you’re very busy or if you get distracted easily, you might want to start with just 5-7 minutes for each component.​  Language learning shouldn’t feel like a chore, so try to keep the drills relatively short so as not to burn yourself out. The point is that you should make a conscious and decisive effort to practice your listening skills on a regular basis. It could be 30 minutes a day or it might be 10. What matters most is that you practice consistently.
5. Get familiar with Scripts and Subtitles – Why not listen and read at the same time? It’s not cheating. When you watch a Russian movie with same-language subtitles or listen to an audiobook while reading along with the print version, you can compare the words as they’re written to the words as they’re actually spoken. That’ll train you to recognize full sentences even when some of the words get under-stressed or “swallowed.”