Seeking Russian Tutor for Online Classes

[kdavid]

Looking for an online Russian tutor for a absolute beginner. Ideally, would meet for an hour each day beginning the week of June 8 and continue through mid- to late-September.

 

Focus will be on listening, speaking, and answering questions that arrive from self-study. I'll provide the textbook, topics, etc. The tutor does not need to lesson plan.

 

Would appreciate any references to people and/or websites (of the latter, I've seen a few, but would be encouraged by hearing personal experience). Thanks!

[arreke]

You can find hundreds of them on http://www.italki.com

[kdavid]

I've seen that website also, thanks!

[grawrt]

How much? Also what time of day?

 

I have a friend from Belarus who might be interested.

[Yanachka]

Hi! I live in east part of Ukraine near the russian grenze. I am graduated tutor and native speaker of Russian language give lessons by Skype. I have Master`s degree in philology and linguistic and big experience teaching foreigners online. If you want to learn Russian, I can help you. My interactive lessons include grammar, speaking, vocabulary, pronounciation practice.The lessons look like usual face-to-face lessons at home. Good sounds and video quality, interactives materials,using the chat box, file transfers, sharing screens/links and giving examples,saving time-all this give better results then usual lessons. First lesson is free. Next lessons -15$ hour( if it is more then 3 times a week it will be discount).Will be glad to help you, Yana.

[kdavid]

Thanks very much for all your replies.

 

After looking more at italki, I've decided to go that route.

 

I'll provide feedback on my experience after a month or so.

[kdavid]

Just as an update, I've found a tutor on italki.com. We had our first lesson today and all went well.

 

If there are any other Russian learners out there, which online dictionary do you use (and does it list syllable stress)? Second, how do you type Russian on your keyboard? Is there an input option based on phonetics, as there is with hanyu pinyin?

[Angelina]

I can teach you South Slavic languages if you want, it's a good basis for literary Russian.

[arreke]

Just as an update, I've found a tutor on italki.com. We had our first lesson today and all went well.

If there are any other Russian learners out there, which online dictionary do you use (and does it list syllable stress)? Second, how do you type Russian on your keyboard? Is there an input option based on phonetics, as there is with hanyu pinyin?

Well, if you are implying English-Russian-English dictionary then Lingvo is must have, it has both online and offline versions.

For Chinese-Russian-Chinese translations http://bkrs.info is the best.

For typing Russian we use standard keyboard based on Russian alphabet, just like English keyboard works. Never heard of way of typing Russian based on phonetics like hanyu pinyin ))

By the way, why did you decide to learn Russian?

[kdavid]

Well, if you are implying English-Russian-English dictionary then Lingvo is must have, it has both online and offline versions.

 

 

Thanks very much for this. It looks to be almost everything I need. Is there a component of this that shows stress? I've tried a simple English-Russian translation just now and it does not show the stress.

 

 

By the way, why did you decide to learn Russian? 

 

 

I suppose I made this decision sometime early in the year. I'm working on my PhD at the moment, focusing on modern Chinese history. I'm particularly interested in the early Communist movement, so it makes sense to learn Russian so as to be able to incorporate more primary sources. I'm also interested in drawing parallels between Stalinist Soviet Russia and Maoist PRC. I've seen some parallels in the works of Jochen Hellbeck and Igal Halfin, and I'll need Russian to pursue this.

 

And if all else fails, knowing Chinese and Russian might help me get a job with the US government.

[Angelina]

And if all else fails, knowing Chinese and Russian might help me get a job with the US government.

 

 

Interesting. Ај мин, интрестинг. 

[gato]

You've read this book? Its coverage of the early years is fairly good.

http://m.aisixiang.com/data/64585.html

杨奎松：评陈永发《中国共产革命七十年》

[kdavid]

You've read this book? Its coverage of the early years is fairly good.

 

 

He's attending a conference I'm presenting at next week. Excited to finally meet him!

 

He's also done quite a bit on Sino-Soviet relations throughout the twentieth century.

[heifeng]

Thanks for starting this thread KDavid (you sort of read my mind b/c I was looking into the same thing)

 

FYI, Although not a tutor service, so far I have found this vocab phone app that I have enjoyed over last few weeks called "Easy Fun Learn" Russian (W/ a bumble bee icon). (http://www.funeasylearn.com/)

 

I personally like it b/c it has numerous ways to quiz you on new vocab acquisition (listening, matching, spelling, etc), which is fun & useful when you have a few minutes to spare throughout the day. Also you can set your native/default language to Chinese so then you are working in 2 languages other than English....or whatever working languages you prefer to use.

 

Will add more as I find other interesting resources.

[gato]

He's attending a conference I'm presenting at next week. Excited to finally meet him!

He's also done quite a bit on Sino-Soviet relations throughout the twentieth century.

Is that 陈永发 or 杨奎松? If it's 杨奎松, you should ask how it's been under Xi Jinping. It seems that political control of academia is much stricter than under Hu/Wen. Yang has been pretty quiet and hasn't publish a new book for a while. He used to be very prolific and publish something new every year.

[kdavid]

杨奎松

 

And he's working on a monograph for Harvard.

 

Will be sure to inquire about the climate, though my experience and inquiries thus far are in line with your comments.

[arreke]

I've tried a simple English-Russian translation just now and it does not show the stress.

You are right, it doesn't show the stress, but it shows an audio example for ever word, so instead of reading the pronunciation you will listen to it, which is even better, because naturally pronunciation should be learned by listening, not by reading, in my opinion ))

I'm particularly interested in the early Communist movement, so it makes sense to learn Russian so as to be able to incorporate more primary sources.

And if all else fails, knowing Chinese and Russian might help me get a job with the US government.

Well, it's a long journey, you have made the first step, bon voyage ))

[Demonic_Duck]

For typing Russian we use standard keyboard based on Russian alphabet, just like English keyboard works. Never heard of way of typing Russian based on phonetics like hanyu pinyin ))

 

Considering that the way the Cyrillic alphabet is used to write modern Russian is almost 100% phonetic (apart from word stress), I'd say that counts as typing based on phonetics to almost the same extent as Pinyin does.

 

There are a few different Russian keyboard layouts, though. The most commonly used one is very different from QWERTY; however, there are also one or two options (mostly designed for non-natives) which are based on QWERTY, with most letters replaced with the closest Russian equivalent.

 

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Russian

[arreke]

 

Considering that the way the Cyrillic alphabet is used to write modern Russian is almost 100% phonetic (apart from word stress), I'd say that counts as typing based on phonetics to almost the same extent as Pinyin does.

 

Well, it's true, most of us instead of typing "ударение" just would type "udarenie" using QWERY, it's kind of fun, but I personally wouldn't recommend it to beginners, because all the dictionaries and books are in Cyrillic, and transliteration is just for typing text messages using mobile phone, it came with first mobile phones that didn't have Cyrillic in it, so the only way to type was using Latin alphabet ))

[Demonic_Duck]

...also because learning Cyrillic for Russian is barely any more difficult for an English speaker than learning Pinyin, not to mention a thousand times easier than learning Hanzi.