The tutorial provides the user with initial skills of colloquial speech, pronunciation and reading in a vivid and evident form . It consists of 26 lessons with over 350 exercises. There are the same personae in all lessons. The tutorial is animated; a famous animator Olga Orlova made cartoons for it. Native speakers voiced all the studied material.
The course includes several parts: the textbook itself, the phonetic notebook, the grammar notebook, and the voiced thematic phrase book.
All phrases and words in the textbook, phrase book, and phonetic notebook are voiced and provided with transcriptions and translations. There are versions for English-speaking and German-speaking students. Translations and transcriptions are displayed in the selected language.
The vocabulary has over 600 words and 1500 phrases.
The student can record, play back and compare the sounding of any phrase to the given patterns of Russian speech at any moment of the lesson .
During the entire course you are offered many practical and test exercises to control words memorizing, translation correctness, grammar and pronunciation. Tests are designed in a playful and informal way that does not influence the high quality of the control.
The tutorial contains a unique built-in analyzer of speech recognition. When the student pronounces a phrase, it is processed, compared to the patterns of Russian speech (different for male and female voices); finally, the estimation of student’s pronunciation quality is presented. Speech graphs of the pronounced phrases are displayed for additional illustration.
The teaching course contains some linguistic games: "Balda”, " Gallows ", "Typesetter", the program teaching to type in Russian.
Serious methodology combined with easy material presentation turns foreign language studying into a team or family game and helps to overcome the psychological barrier of "fear of foreign language".
A flexible course setup is provided in the textbook; every student can follow the default program of studying material or study lessons and exercises in any order. Setup options allow customizing the length of the lessons, the necessity to pronounce the studied phrase and some other things.
1. DialoguesDialogue of characters. Each phrase is voiced, provided with translation and transcription. After reproducing by the announcer any phrase can be repeated into the microphone, recorded and played back.
Final lessons are presented as separate fragments of recently learnt material. The marked words are the references to the appropriate page of the dictionary containing a voiced word with its translation and transcription.
Exercises are intended for thorough perfecting the skill to pronounce separate Russian phonemes.
4. "Shooting Gallery" –exercises for perfecting pronunciation skills
The analysis of pronunciation is based on a unique method of speech recognition.
Up to three targets appear on the screen, each representing Russian letters, words and phrases. The sounds are voiced only once and must be repeated into the microphone. The gun then fires at each target, leaving bullet holes to represent how closely the repeated sounds resemble the original voicing. Speech graph are shown, analyzing the pronunciation of the student and that of the native speaker (the computer). After a final score has been shown, any sound can be repeated for practice before continuing the course.Repeating of words after the announcer and building comparative speech graphs.
6. Retelling
Phrases are voiced and can be repeated into the microphone. The corresponding picture can be viewed after all the necessary phrases have been voiced.
Tests are intended to control the studied material. The score is estimated in five grades. Åvery student's results are presented in the table. If a student is not satisfied with his personal achievement one can repeat the exercise.1. Building correct structures
The student is to build correct grammar structures by choosing an answer from the given variants.
2. Vocabulary test (based on the dialogues)
Multiple choice: the correct answer to a question is to be selected from a list.
Twenty pairs of cards are divided between the computer and the player. Each of the player’s cards, dealt face-up, reveals a word or phrase in English or Russian. The translation of each card can be matched to the cards in the computer’s hand, which are turned face-down. One of the cards will only match the Joker. Before the game begins, a percentage of cards to be played must be staked. The aim of the game is to play all the cards by correct and complete pairs matching.
A test on Russian writing skills. A suitable word is required to be entered.
The ability to recognize speech is tested by means of these exercises. Objects corresponding to the voiced phrases have to be selected; incorrect answers are automatically corrected, voiced and should be repeated into the microphone. The time of exercise is limited.
Several language games, known and favorite from the childhood, are included in the structure of the educational course.The student is to make as many new words from the letters of one word as possible.
This game is training keyboard typing skills. "Balls" on which letters and syllables are written are sent to a player. The player should press the corresponding letters on the keyboard using the ten-finger touch-typing method as soon as possible.
The aim is to guess the word by known letters during a limited amount of attempts.