“Russian Tutor” textbook

In 1993-1994 AMSD company developed a multimedia “Russian Tutor” by the order of ESD company (Germany). German version and linguistic games were added into it in1995.

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.