Conversational Russian

My name is Maia, I’m Slovenian and I’m a teacher of Russian and Spanish.

After I finished my studies in philology in Slovenia I enrolled in a two-year course (July/August 2007-July 2008) at the Russian language school in Moscow studied with Alexandra as my teacher.

I was taking an advanced-level group class with her, as well as individual classes. Her lessons were always very useful and interesting, and we discussed every possible topic, chatting about current events and reading magazine and newspaper articles. Alexandra always brought with her to class audio and video recordings, so that we could watch a film or cartoon, and then she prepare additional material based on what we had seen.

Alexandra knew how to include every student in the class even considering that some students required additional motivation. We worked hard during our lessons, but the atmosphere in Alexandra’s classes was always relaxed. She assigns a variety of tasks for homework, which I like, because I had come to Moscow to study and her lessons were always a lot of work.

Alexandra is an excellent specialist of the Russian language and she always explained everything very clearly. Her personality is also well-suited to her work, as she is a pleasant, warm, and patient person.

As both a student and a teacher, I would strongly recommend Alexandra as a teacher for any student.

Learning, particularly another language can be a pain, a torture and something that may not be easily understandable. But learning Russian language with Julia Sutuginiene can be a joy and something that will stay with you, and make you want to learn more!

Julia's teaching was wonderful! She is a master teacher and her energy and enthusiasm were evident! I was a beginner when I started lessons with Julia and during our classes I reached B1 level! This was a class I always looked forward to. Her techniques and the fact that classes were fun made all the difference from other teachers that I had had before. Julia is a very talented teacher and has so many creative ways to help her students learn. I am truly impressed and I highly recommend Julia`s class for anyone who is interested in learning Russian language in an effective and funny way. Julia is an amazing teacher with so much creativity and professionalism which helped her students to learn Russian language more quickly and easily!

Six months ago I had been studying Russian at University for 2 years. My level was already fairly good, but I had several shortcomings, especially with regard to speaking. Even if I knew I had a relatively good understanding of grammar and good pronunciation, until then I had had very few opportunities to speak Russian. I also have always had difficulty learning new words, and the fact of having very few opportunities to practice the language certainly did not help. Although the university had given me a good base, I realized that was not enough, so I turned to Russificate.

Six months ago I met my new Russificate teacher, Julia Sutuginiene . Since then, thanks to her, I have made tremendous progress. The first results were already visible after the first few lessons.

I do not know where to begin to list the qualities that I liked about Julia and her method. Probably my words will be few and won't do justice to the great experience I have had. Julia's lessons are never predictable or monotonous and all the time is exploited in full. Everything seems natural and sometimes even easy, yet it is clear that behind all this there is the teaching method, a thorough preparation of each part of the lesson, and last but not least, passion.

Julia uses films as part of her lectures: each lesson was built on a movie episode of 5-10 minutes. In my opinion, it is a revolutionary method because, in this way, the student has a point of reference that goes beyond simple notions of grammar and vocabulary found in books. This way, you have the chance to hear and practice the authentic, real language that Russians use in their everyday life.

Thanks to our work with the films and the continuous conversation practice I had with Julia - always and only in Russian - my active mastery of the language has improved a lot. I felt as if every week I did a "full immersion " into the Russian language and culture, and even if the lesson lasted only 90 minutes, I preserved my knowledge for another week until the next lesson.

Julia always tries to meet your needs in any possible way and you will not ever be disappointed . She is able to quickly understand what your limitations are and to organize her work in order to try to overcome them. With a difficult language like Russian the risk of being bored is very high, but in 6 months of lessons, I have never been bored! On the contrary, Julia has maintains her enthusiasm and now my passion for the Russian language and culture is more alive than ever.

Even though I still have much to learn, with Julia Sutuginiene I achieved the results that 6 months ago were unthinkable: no other teacher has ever managed to make me learn so much in so little time!

The best Russian teacher I've ever had.
VOTE: A+.