Creative writing

I have had the pleasure to be the student of Tatiana Martin for a year.

Though I have had russian lessons before, and I was hesitant to continue lessons over Skype. Nonetheless, I started learning Russian with Tatiana while still at a beginner level. Though Russian is a difficult language, after months of unbroken 2 lessons a week I started to be able to read short passages, which quickly improved to reading easy short stories. After about a year I was able to hold a very basic short conversation with good grammar and vocabulary, as well as understand some passages of Russian songs and understand russian news tweets.

Tatiana is a very patient teacher, she is organised, and takes the time to prepare lessons and follows up with homework. She is also very friendly and breaks the formality of the lessons to make them fun and enjoyable.

The Russificate school is very comfortable to deal with, and Yulia, its director, is very organised and punctual regarding replying to email enquiries and sorting out payments.

Mikhail Yurievich was my tutor of the Russian language in 2014 during the first semester at the MSU in the name of Lomonosov. With him we studied the grammar rules and the spoken language at the same time; he understood that the grammar rules- are one thing, but the way that the Russian people speak, in which mode you can interact in Russian, which cliché phrases the Russians use, how to quickly deal with basic, political and philosophical situations, when you need to express your opinion and which songs all the Russian people know and sing- are completely different things and are very important.
We did written exercises and checked them during the lessons. Mikhail Yurievich always gave us dialogues- which in turn established discussions on many different topics, and so in this way all of the students in the group got the opportunity to speak their mind out loud, ask each other questions and so on. Mikhail Yurievich has achieved his goal; no-one was embarrassed or afraid to speak and, in my opinion, this is most important. Every student felt enough confidence to speak freely and to understand that it is possible! In conclusion, I believe that Mikhail Yurievich is a great tutor!

I would without question recommend Pavel as a teacher. I look forward to his lessons, as they are always enjoyable. Everything is learnt communicatively and you are never overloaded with burdensome grammar exercises, either in or out of class. His approach has not only provided me with the language I need for communication, but it has pushed me to use all the language that I have acquired. This has enabled me to speak much more freely and improve my confidence. As a result, I feel that I am progressing and my motivation has increased.