Best Russian Language Learning Resources

This is one of my favorite online courses which has some of the highest quality Russian dialogue material available.

Rocket Russian doesn’t follow a ‘cookie cutter’ approach like other well-known programs such as Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur, and it has a tonne of excellent audio content for all levels ranging from beginner to advanced.

An extremely well-made and very unique Russian course aimed at teaching Russian through a unique “story learning method”.

If you’re looking for a full Russian curriculum that leads you all the way through to fluency, and are facing difficulties getting your head around how Russian works, this will definitely help you.

This is an excellent Russian course in the form of audio podcasts and downloadable lessons.

As well as podcast-style lessons, you’ll find videos, a vocabulary database and dictionary, grammar explanations and various other useful features.

This is the most unique and effective Russian phrasebook alternative I’ve ever seen and one I frequently recommend on this site.

Based on solid research into memory and ‘stuck song syndrome’, Rapid Russian teaches you the language over the top of highly repetitive tunes that cause the phrases to ‘get stuck’ in your head.

It’s surprisingly effective and is so enjoyable that it doesn’t feel like study at all (read my Earworms review for more info).

This is another very unique product that improves your fluency through a highly repetitive ‘listen and repeat’ approach.

It is, in my opinion, one of the the most useful resources I’ve seen for training Russian listening comprehension. Definitely not a conventional course but you’ll be amazed at how effective it is at improving your Russian fluency if you use it daily (read my Glossika review).

Not too long ago it was really difficult or impossible to practice Russian without actually traveling to Russia.

Thankfully, tools like italki have made it possible to connect with native speakers from all over the world to practice or to take personalized lessons over Skype (read my italki review).

The great news is, Russian lessons over Skype through italki are incredibly cheap compared to most teachers in person (many are as low as $6-8 an hour depending on what language you’re learning!). All the frustration of payments and scheduling is handled brilliantly by italki too which makes it very easy and stress free to arrange sessions.

LingoPie is an outstanding library of high quality, interactive TV shows in 6 major European languages, including Russian.

If you enjoy learning from your favorite sitcoms and other genres, this is your best option.

This is a fantastic tool for studying Russian using subtitled video (check out my FluentU review).

It’s very similar to Yabla (not available for Russian) but has a wider array of video content to choose from.