renatailitsky Last updated: January 25, 2023

Level Up Your Russian Skills with These 6 Intermediate Courses

Хотите улучшить свой русский язык? Вы пришли в нужное место! (“Want to improve your Russian skills? You’ve come to the right place!”)

If you’re ready to take your Russian skills to the next level, we’re going to show you some of the most awesome intermediate Russian courses out there.

Intermediate Russian courses will help you become more comfortable conversing with native speakers, whether you’re planning a business trip to Russia or want to impress your бабушка (grandmother). Plus, they’re easily accessible online.

You’ve come this far with your Russian skills—let’s take the next big leap!

Benefits of Learning Russian with Intermediate Courses
Tips on Successfully Using Courses to Learn Russian
5 Intermediate Russian Courses to Boost Your Language Skills

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Benefits of Learning Russian with Intermediate Courses

Just because you’re not a beginner anymore doesn’t mean you won’t benefit from Russian language courses.

The focused, directed study of an intermediate course can be vital to taking your next big step in Russian proficiency. Here are some of the key benefits:

Your pronunciation will improve. You’ll get instruction on speaking and you’ll hear correct pronunciations that you would be less likely to encounter during self-directed study. For example, you wouldn’t realize that Russians don’t shorten their vowels like Americans do just by reading a Russian textbook or drilling vocabulary flashcards.

If your goal is to learn intermediate Russian, you need to be able to say words correctly, or no one will understand you. Russian courses often provide you with written and oral versions of lesson material, so you’ll learn which syllables should be stressed depending on the context of the sentence.

Otherwise, when trying to ask someone to open a zamók (lock), you won’t be the subject of strange looks when you ask instead to open a zámok (castle)!

They’re affordable. Purchasing Russian textbooks can be costly, and investing in Russian language schools can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. However, the Russian intermediate courses that are included in this article are low cost or, better yet, free! Plus, there’s a wide range of intermediate courses available, and as most are free, there’s no commitment—so if a course doesn’t appeal to you, you can simply move on to the next one.

You determine how long you want to study for. Unless you’re a full-time Russian student, you likely have a job, a family or a life that may not allow you hours upon hours of study time. You can hone your Russian skills with these courses around your schedule and at your own pace.

Tips on Successfully Using Courses to Learn Russian

Not everyone who sets out to sharpen their Russian skills reaches the intermediate level. If you don’t want to carry a dictionary with you every time you want to say something in Russian, you should use the following tips to set yourself up for success with Russian intermediate courses.

Write down words you don’t understand to look up later. It’s easy to speed through a course’s lessons, but learning Russian isn’t a race—it’s a journey. Take your time and write down anything you don’t understand to look up later.

Work in groups to study together. To motivate yourself and to have more fun studying, create study groups with others. This way, you can practice your new intermediate Russian skills by having conversations with one another.

Stay consistent. Without the pressure of attending a physical classroom every week, it can be hard to remember to stick to your studies. Create schedules and set alarms to remind you to study.

5 Intermediate Russian Courses to Boost Your Language Skills

Rushin’ to improve your Russian? No need to scour the web for intermediate Russian courses, as we’ve picked the crème de la crème of courses, or would crème de la борщ (a common Russian beet soup) be more appropriate in this situation?

Russian-Plus

Offering a variety of Russian courses, this website has focused on providing useful lessons for those who have learned the basics, and want to learn more in order to hold conversations in the real world. These free courses are especially useful for specific situations, such as making airplane or train travel plans in Russia, ordering a meal in a Russian restaurant or talking about the weather.

FluentU

FluentU teaches you Russian by immersing you in native speech using authentic clips like movie trailers and news clips.

These videos help you learn to understand Russian at its native pace and pronunciation, and the videos are all enhanced with interactive subtitles so you can look up words while you watch.

FluentU offers Russian videos for all learning levels, including content for intermediate learners. All videos are sorted by difficulty and topic, so you can focus on the Russian that you most need to learn. And the videos are accompanied by flashcards and personalized quizzes to help you review the material.

You can use FluentU in a browser or install the iOS or Android app on your device for mobile learning.

Everyday Russian

These courses break up material for low-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate Russian students. The best part is that you can access any lesson, and move on if it’s too easy, or jump backwards if you find it to be too difficult.

These intermediate courses offer a variety of topics, from verb conjugations, to negotiating a discount with a Russian vendor, to discussing your emotions (if you travel to Russia, you might skip that last one, as most Russians don’t like to talk about their feelings).

17 Minute Languages

This course promises to help learners achieve the B1 and B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) in just four months with 17 minutes of study per day. Even if your goal doesn’t involve passing the CEFR, you can learn how to converse in Russian with this helpful online tool that can be accessed from any device.

For $29.95, you’ll have access to 18,000 words to improve your Russian skills. For $97, you can also get access to Russian vocabulary proficiency, business and travel courses. The best part is that 17 Minute Languages offers a forum for all intermediate Russian learners to connect with other students, ask questions and offer help.

Live Lingua

Calling itself the world’s first total immersion language school online, Live Lingua offers a free online e-book that focuses on intermediate Russian skills created by the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. Access more than 981 free pages of Russian lessons that aim to cover topics that are most difficult for non-native speakers to grasp. Learn about types of Russian verbs, pronouns and other grammar rules as they pertain to everyday vocabulary.

This course also offers a pronunciation tool that allows you to record yourself to hear how you pronounce common Russian words.

Whether you want to read an e-book, connect with a teacher through video conferencing or do self-driven exercises, these Russian intermediate courses should get you conversing in Russian in no time!