What is Basic?

Over the past few weeks, several of my students have shared their frustration with me: “I’ve been studying Russian for so long and I still can’t use basic vocabulary! When I asked what kind of vocabulary they were referring to, they mentioned specific cooking verbs (e.g., verbs for cutting ingredients in different ways), words describing

How Do We Memorize Words?

When I was working on my master thesis in the university, I found a very interesting book that cardinally changed my perception of speech and language. The book, written by language philosopher and linguist Boris Gasparov was titled rather vaguely: Language, Memory, Image. Behind those three words was the whole new concept of human speech.

Anxiety

Quite a lot of my students have told me that they feel anxious when speaking Russian. They are good at many other language activities like listening comprehension, reading and even writing. However, the mere idea that they have to say something in Russian makes them panic. “It’s like my mind goes all blank when I

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