Spicy Details:

Unit Seven is now complete and so Unit Eight is ready to roll! And you know what that means: A NEW INTRO SONG! But before we get to that, Unit Eight will be the second Reading Russian unit. BTW, units nine and ten will focus on speaking Russian and so those of you who obsess over proper pronunciation will have to wait until then to satisfy your desire for perfect articulation!

Check out the new song for Reading 02!

The Rusky Ed channel on YouTube has surpassed 100,000 views! It took only three years and a few months to make it this far. Hopefully, the next 100,000 views will come much more quickly. In fact, at the current average of 750 views per week it should take approximately two and a half years to reach 200,000 views! What Rusky Ed lacks in speed, he makes up for with persistence!

Rusky Ed is just about done with the third grammar unit. That makes a total of six units completed so far! The seventh unit will be called Reading 01. The format for this unit will be slightly different from the format of previous units. Since the emphasis will be on reading, students will be presented with a short paragraph written in Russian at the beginning of each lesson which they will be asked to translate. After students have attempted to translate the paragraph on their own, Rusky Ed will take them through the paragraph line by line.

Check out the new song for Reading 01!

Rusky Ed is currently on his third mustache. He's worn out two so far and chances are that he'll need a few more before he completes all ten of the planned units! This photograph is from the end of one of Rusky Ed's videos.

The first lesson of the third unit on Russian grammar is expected to be posted on Saturday (November 6, 2010). The first unit covered parts of speech other than verbs and the second unit covered verbs. This third unit will deal with all the parts of speech and more! It's not so much a review unit as a unit that is intended to consolidate and coordinate what was covered in units one and two. From the perspective of an English speaker there's a lot to keep track of when it comes to Russian grammar and Russian Grammar Unit Three will keep track of all the picky details!

Check out the new video intro song!

Recent research has shown that students trying to learn a new language take longer when the language is modeled by speakers with an authentic accent. They actually do better when the language is mispronouced slightly to conform to the phonemic structures of their own language. This way the words are different, but not too different. So, at first it is best not to concentrate so much on proper pronunciation. Build vocabulary and master the grammar first and then worry about working on proper pronunciation and accent!

Worrying about picky details and trying to do everything perfect are enemies of progress. As Noam Chomsky observed in Syntactic Structures (1957), children have an astonishing facility to learn "the rules of natural language no matter how complicated" and they do so "incredibly quickly from what are often imperfect and degenerate samples." People make lots of mistakes when they are learning something new and often their teachers and the materials they use while learning are less than perfect, yet with persistence all the imperfections get worked out and coherent knowledge emerges.

Rusky Ed presents his lessons with a strong accent of unknown origin and many claim that he often mispronounces Russian words. While this is true, the tendency to over-emphasize pronunciation early in the learning of a lesson is counter-productive. First one develops a basic vocabulary, then one learns the grammar, next reading and listening fluency become the focus, and only after all these stages does pronunciation become of prime importance. So, keep this in mind and concentrate on the appropriate focus at each stage of your learning of the Russian language!

Rusky Ed is just about through with his second review video for the first Russian Grammar unit. Rusky Ed is putting out one lesson per week at this time, but hopes to increase his output in the not too distant future. Rusky Ed is also quite pleased to have accumulated over one hundred subscribers on YouTube. It is his hope that all who view his videos are either entertained or edified, or a little of both!

The long awaited units on Russian Grammar are now being produced and uploaded. The introductory lesson for this unit can be viewed by clicking here! As has always been the case in the past, a new introductory song is used for this unit.

Rusky Ed kicked off the Russian Verbs unit just a few days ago. You can watch the preview video for this unit by clicking here! As is the case with the previous units, this unit will include a total of fifty lessons.

UNITS 1 to 3: Vocabulary Building - Introduce various categories of words with an emphasis on spelling. Grammar and pronunciation are not priorities here. In fact, grammar is pretty much ignored and pronunciations are a bit Americanized without attention paid to stress or anything like that.

UNITS 4 to 6: Grammar - After a foundational vocabulary of about 900 words has been built up it is time to start worrying about word forms and stringing words together to form phrases and sentences. Pronunciation is still not a priority.

UNITS 7 and 8: READING - The goal in these lessons is to develop reading fluency and seconarily to work some on writing skills. Pronunciation is still not really an area of focus.

UNITS 9 and 10: SPEAKING - At this point grammar rules should be understood and it is now time to work on real time production of language. This is where pronunciation becomes a key focus.

Video Intro Song Video Conclusion Song

The Super Note contest was a little contest held between some prominent YouTubers to see who could accumulate the largest number of video responses in which people held a note on a single breath for as long as possible. The winner was determined by adding up the total number of seconds that notes were maintained in their video responses.
Super Note Song

Click here to watch СВЕРХНОТА (supernote) at YouTube!!!