Russia is the world's largest country, covering nearly 6.6 million square miles, in eastern Europe and western Asia. According to the Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) Ethnologue Survey (1999), the Russian language is spoken by approximately 170 million native speakers and has a reputation as a difficult language. Speakers of Russian qualify for a variety of jobs within this vast country, including government and trade jobs. There are also American jobs in trade and foreign service available to Russian speakers. Some study tips will make this language seem easy.

Classes
Some people have a remarkable skill for learning languages quickly and independently, but Russian will not come so easily for most people. Check with your local university or adult education center to see if they offer any courses in Russian language. Even if you don't enroll in classes full-time, you can still sign up for one or two courses and pay by credit hour. In addition to a Russian language course, see if they offer any courses in Russian culture to supplement your language studies. If there are no courses available in your area, find a course on the Internet. There are a plethora of online resources at your disposal; some courses are even free. The down side of online courses is that you won't have any classmates with whom to practice your speaking.

Watch Films in Russian
A great way to boost your language skills is to hear the language spoken as often as possible. Watching movies in Russian with English subtitles will expose you to the language and help you to pick out recognizable words. A great place for beginners to start is by watching cartoons or children's programs in which the language is usually spoken slower and with simpler sentence structure. You may enjoy "Cheburashka," "Good Night, Kids," or "Ulitsa Sezam," the Russian version of "Sesame Street."

Grammar Tables
One of the most difficult parts of learning Russian is that there are different endings applied to nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives in different cases. Knowing when to use which ending can be terrifying to the novice speaker, but once you master them, you will find that Russian is actually easier to understand because of these different endings. These different cases and endings must be memorized and a great way to do that is with a grammar table. You will need separate tables for noun, adjective, pronoun and verb endings. On the left side of your paper, write each case on a different line: nominative, prepositional, genitive, accusative, dative and instrumental. At the top of the page, make a space for masculine, neuter, feminine and plural endings. Then, write the appropriate ending in each intersecting box. Your table for verbs will only need boxes for each pronoun and the appropriate singular or plural conjugations. Examples are available at The University of Pittsburgh's "Russian Grammar Tables" website. Write your grammar table on a small piece of paper and keep it with you at all times. Whenever you have a spare moment, pull the table out and practice. Remember that repetition is key to memorization.

Verb books
Once you have mastered the various cases of Russian, you will be able to practice your speech. There are so many different Russian verbs, however, that a new speaker cannot possibly know them all. For this reason, a book of Russian verbs will be a useful reference to keep on hand. Once you know the verb you would like to use, simply apply to rules for grammatical case to the verb to form a complete sentence.

Study Abroad
There is no better way to master a language than to be immersed in it. Once you have gotten comfortable with the basics of Russian speech, consider taking a trip to Russia. A semester or year abroad will provide the best learning, but any amount of immersion will improve your speaking abilities exponentially. Although you will find some English speakers to help you, make it a point to avoid using English as much as possible. Before leaving for your trip, contact a university close to your hotel to find out if they offer any intense Russian courses that you could take while you are there.