renatailitsky Last updated: February 1, 2023

8 Russian Vocabulary Exercise Resources to Rev Up Your Word Count

We want to help you learn Russian vocabulary with exercises, but not the physical kind!

These exercises are for the mind instead of the body.

We’re going to present vocabulary exercises in various formats—apps, websites, games, quizzes and books to expand your Russian word stock.

Ready, set, go!

Russian for Free
FluentU
Russian for Everyone
PracticeRussian.com
Syvum
Influent
Print Sources to Help You Practice Vocabulary Exercises
- “Russian Pocket Puzzles”
- “Russian (100 Word Exercise Book)”

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

With so many resources out there for learning Russian, how do you sift through them all?

Start here. Below is a list of online and print resources you can use to become a true Russian wordsmith.

We spend hours upon hours of our daily life online, which is why it’s appropriate to use that medium to learn and reinforce Russian words.

The internet offers a multitude of different websites with tools relevant to your vocabulary goal and fluency level. We recommend the following six online Russian sources to get started.

Russian for Free

This website features 25 Russian vocabulary exercises on a multitude of topics, such as home objects, insects, fruit and so on.

Although you’ll need to install Adobe Flash Player to take advantage of the content, each exercise features 10 challenging questions that don’t repeat; the exercise refreshes when you get all the answers correct. This means you can do the same exercise repeatedly, but you’ll keep getting new questions.

Russian for Free offers various other tools to perfect your Russian, such as courses, private lessons, videos, cartoons and comics.

FluentU

FluentU teaches Russian vocabulary with authentic videos like commercials, movie trailers and music videos.

These hand-picked videos are enhanced with interactive captions that let you click words to get in-context definitions, example sentences, clips from other videos where they show up and an audio pronunciation.

FluentU’s immersive method lets you hear and read Russian vocabulary in context so you remember the meanings better. And with FluentU’s flashcards and quizzes, you can review any vocabulary that you save to your flashcards so you remember it later.

Quizzes on FluentU are personalized based on your answers, making sure you practice the words you most need to review.

Practice choosing, hearing and typing vocabulary words through these exercises, or try your pronunciation skills with speaking questions on the iOS and Android apps.

Russian for Everyone

Russian for Everyone is a comprehensive site with self-guided lessons on introductory topics, as well as grammar and vocabulary. It even has a nifty Word of the Day feature for those who want to start expanding their vocabulary a little at a time.

When it comes to vocabulary exercises, this site offers four different categories of games, including:

Hangman games that will help you learn terms for family, professions, clothes, fruits and vegetables and transportation.

Picture and audio games, which focus on vocabulary for clothes, fruits and vegetables, colors and transportation.

Words and picture games that focus on mixed vocabulary and transportation.

Grammar games and exercises to review gender of nouns, nominative plurals, adjectives and verb conjugations.

With the help of these games, you’ll not only learn hundreds of new words but also the proper rules on how to use them in the Russian language.

The games allow you to become familiar with the Russian alphabet, proper spelling and also pronunciation of some of the words.

PracticeRussian.com

PracticeRussian.com offers many different ways to improve your Russian vocabulary. Along with language lessons and tests, check out the various online games on the site, like crossword puzzles, word mazes, hangman and memory games.

These games give you an up close and personal look into the Russian alphabet and spelling, and allow you to expand your vocabulary authentically.

The games are targeted toward intermediate or advanced Russian students, since the words might be a little difficult for beginners.

Syvum

Syvum offers dozens and dozens of activities to help you learn Russian, promising to increase your vocabulary by thousands of words after completion.

Like the other resources, the vocabulary is divided by topic. However, the cool thing about Syvum is that the “quizzes” are presented in two different versions—English to Russian and Russian to English.

This means that you can start by learning the Russian meanings of words, and then test your knowledge by translating from Russian back to your native tongue.

Some activities we recommend are vocabulary for asking to use the restroom, vocabulary for body parts and vocabulary to describe clothes.

Influent

Influent is the perfect resource to increase your knowledge of Russian vocabulary while playing games.

For $9.99, you can find yourself part of an interactive 3-D experience, clicking on various objects to learn their names. Open doors, drawers and closets to learn the terms of various household items in Russian.

Whether you choose to be a person walking around the different rooms of a house or riding around on an airplane, you’re sure to learn the names of basic words all around you.

Hear how the words are pronounced and see how they’re written to get the full Russian-learning experience.

Print Sources to Help You Practice Vocabulary Exercises

There are times when you don’t have access to the internet or simply want to disconnect from the screen. That doesn’t mean you should lose the ability to practice Russian vocabulary in the meantime!

Utilize the two print sources listed below to practice Russian words offline.

“Russian Pocket Puzzles”

This paperback is written by Erik Zidowecki, an expert in language learning. He’s the co-founder of UniLang and founder of Parleremo, a company that produces word search puzzles in multiple languages. He’s also the Editor in Chief of Parrot Time magazine, which covers language, linguistics and culture.

“Russian Pocket Puzzles” is the first volume in a collection of puzzles and quizzes to improve your Russian skills.

The book contains 120 activities to help you teach yourself Russian—40 puzzles, 40 word scrambles and 40 multiple choice quizzes. The topics covered include: clothes, colors, animals, household objects, time, family, body parts and numbers.

Every vocabulary exercise has helpful hints and an answer guide to help you if you get stumped. Plus, it features a dictionary that covers all of the words in the book and their English definitions.

“Russian (100 Word Exercise Book)”

Author Jane Wightwick offers this handy book. Targeting beginners, the author promises to help you have fun while introducing you to new Russian terminology.

The book features 100 basic Russian words on the following topics: clothes, body parts, animals, household objects, objects around town, opposites and basic phrases.

There are a ton of useful activities to keep you busy while learning the language, such as memory games, word searches and flashcards.

The author includes proven strategies to help students not only remember the names of the words but also spell them correctly to help with reading and writing.

The book also offers 100 tear-out flashcards which you can utilize on the go to test your knowledge and help yourself remember what you’ve learned.

The aforementioned eight online and print vocabulary resources will help you learn Russian vocabulary with exercises, games and tests.

You can switch between the resources, as each offers an individual advantage (flashcards or audio transcriptions) to help you learn, pronounce, read and write Russian before you know it!