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Help with Russian Language Learning on the Web

  1. Internet basics  - using a browser, etc. (For newcomers to the Net.)
  2. The organisation of this website - i.e. by authors.
  3. How to use this website to study.
  4. Advice for teachers on how to use this website.
  5. Other help pages - such as using the audio controls.

See also the pages on Troubleshooting problems

Internet Basics
Navigating While looking at a page you may need to use the window's scrollbars to scroll down to see information at the bottom. On some pages Go to top of page buttons appear which return you to the top of the page.
Following links You may jump to different pages of information by following links (which look like this, or sometimes like this), by clicking buttons on the page (the grey rectangles), and sometimes by clicking an image (for example, the image at the top of the page takes you back to the homepage).
Going back To return to a previous page, use your web browser's back button. 
Making the web work Some kinds of information, such as audio and video, require your browser to have extra components called plug-ins. See the troubleshooting page if you think your computer or browser may not be set up correctly.
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The organisation of this website

The site has been organised under various Russian authors, making it best to study one author at a time. For each author you will find the following pages...

Author An introduction to the author and to the material studied under this author.
History A passage detailing the historical context of the author and the text.
Criticism A literary critique of the text and/or the author's work.
Text The particular text under study, including footnote explanations of vocabulary and grammar.
Translation An English translation of the text, viewable alone, or side by side with the Russian.
Exercises A selection of exercises to test your understanding of the text, and its associated vocabulary and grammar.
Grammar A grammar reference section which focuses on a certain aspect of grammar from the text.
Audio The text read aloud, with word stress indicated.
Video Video clips discussing the text and the author.
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How to use this website 

You are free to study the pages of this website in any order, though several learning paths are suggested here, focusing on:

  1. reading and discussion
  2. listening and pronunciation
  3. grammar and vocabulary
Suggested learning path 1:
(reading and discussion):
  1. Choose the author you wish to study from the gallery of authors.
  2. Read the history section relevant to the author to put him into context.
  1. Do the vocabulary matching exercise as a pre-reading task.
  2. Read to understand the gist of the text - don't look up any words.
  3. Do the comprehension questions.
  4. Read the text again, to try and pinpoint the answers to the comprehension questions.
  5. Finally, read the text fully, looking up vocabulary as necessary.
  1. Read the literary criticism of the author's work.
  2. Then watch a video-clip discussion about the text or author.
  1. With others, have a discussion about the issues brought up in the text, the literary criticism section, and the video.
  2. Write an essay about the text and/or issues mentioned in it.
Suggested learning path 2:
(listening and pronunciation)
  1. Choose the author you wish to study from the gallery of authors.
  2. Read the history section relevant to the author to put him into context.
  1. Listen to the full audio version of the text.
  2. Do the comprehension questions to see how much you have followed.
  3. Listen again, using smaller chunks if necessary, to understand the precise meaning.
  4. If necessary, listen and read at the same time.
  1. Before progressing to pronunciation practice you may wish to look up words you don't know and do the vocabulary match exercise to check your understanding of them.
  1. Now listen again to the story one chunk at a time. (Use the repeat button to hear short snippets of audio)
  2. Practice repeating the words and phrases of the text.
  3. Finally, try reading the text out loud to a partner.
Suggested learning path 3:
(grammar and vocabulary)
  1. Choose the author you wish to study from the gallery of authors.
  2. Having read or listened to the text, as in paths one or two...
  1. Return to the text page and expand the words window at the bottom of the frame (by dragging the separating bar upwards) and study the word definitions.
  2. Do the vocabulary match exercise to check your understanding of the words.
  1. If the grammar is new, read up about it on the grammar page.
  2. Work through the grammar exercises on the exercises page, noting the explanations which are offered when you get a question wrong.
  3. Refer to the grammar reference pages where necessary as you go.
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Advice for teachers
When and where to use this site The University of Sussex has several rooms where online classes can be held: in the library, computing centre or school computer rooms. Note that multimedia facilities may not necessarily be available on all machines, and headphones may be necessary to listen to the audio.

London School of Economics - The Ruslang program can be accessed for self study from any computer on the LSE campus, and online group classes can be held at the Language Centre study room. Note that headphones may be necessary to listen to the audio material.

Off-campus users of this site, please let us know if you intend to use this site heavily since we would like to monitor demand carefully. Thank you. We suggest that you do not attempt to view the video clips off campus.

Please note that use of the multimedia aspects of this site does place a strain on the University networks at peak usage time, and we would request visitors to this site to consider other users.
How to use this website See the above section for ideas on learning paths, i.e. how to progress through the various elements within this website.

As well as this, you may wish to exploit the links to other related information on the web, and set broader tasks to research the web more widely. However, be aware that once exploring the world wide web that it can be easy to get distracted, so students need to be given clear guidelines, or be monitored.

Feedback Please let us know how you use this site, and what you think of it.
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Other help pages

Follow these links for detailed information...
Using audio explains how to use the audio screen and controls.
Troubleshooting problems tells you what to do when something doesn't work.
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the introductory pages

Return to the introduction.

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