In my last post, I explained why I was shifting my focus temporarily to Russian. The bottom line is, there are more resources available for beginner-level Russian that work for me, than beginner-level Ukrainian.

The one I started with was Comprehensible Russian, which as the name implies is 100% comprehensible input, including for complete beginners. While I don’t find it as engaging or thorough as the equivalent resource for French, I still found it useful. I did have to learn to re-watch the videos several times in small batches, rather than binge continuously.

I didn’t just use the Youtube channel though. I’ve not mentioned the Michel Thomas Method on this blog before, but I came across it through a promotion for attendees of the Polyglot Conference. At first it sounded like language acquisition, in that the site talks about not trying to memorise and working “in tune with” the way the brain works; however when I listened to a sample, it’s still taught in a “this word means this …” way, but in a more relaxed environment. I bought the 1-hour Russian to give myself a little vocabulary boost, as I was finding the videos above more difficult to follow than the French ones.

However, when I made the decision to get some Russian under my belt before proceeding further with the Ukrainian, I also ordered both the print and audiobook copies of Olly Richards’ Short Stories in Russian (Beginners). Turned out it’s aimed at high beginners, which I am definitely not yet! I did recognise a few words in the first chapter, but not enough to gauge context from, so I’ll come back to that later.

This “crash course” as I called it, is trickier than I expected, but I do feel very much that I’m on the right path.