Reddit reviews Russian Learners' Dictionary: 10,000 Russian Words in Frequency Order

First, i know it will seem pessimistic of me to ask but; are you guys getting along very well? Most likely one will be better than the other, cause some frustration and will kill the learning process because of ego mismanagement.

If you guys can really work as a team, here's what i suggest:

• As a couple, your best asset is the very fact that you're a couple. If you live in a big town, google russian and the name of your town and go hangout there. Since it will be an "enclave" rather than a ghetto, you will see cultural stuff everywhere. Pamphlets and ads in local russian newspapers with tons of cultural events and beginners-in-russian are most often than not warmly welcomed, since russian is a very hard language to master for non-native speakers, meaning that they will be happy that a stranger puts in the effort of learning their language and their culture. They will often go the extra mile to help you pronounce and correct your mistakes. Of course, you will encounter suspicious and taciturn characters but hanging out in russian cafés and attending local cultural events will super-charge your russian assimilation. Languages are meant to be spoken.
  
  
• Secondly, i strongly, strongly recommend the acquisition of this book:
  
  http://www.amazon.ca/Russian-Learners-Dictionary-Words-Frequency/dp/0415137926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300431171&sr=8-1-spell
  
  And follow this man's method, The Goldlist Method:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rH6FERpM5fQ (Part one)
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTyJiGVJ0LM (Part two)
  
  This will be your main method of vocabulary acquisition. I also recommend:
  
  http://www.amazon.ca/Schaums-Outline-Russian-Grammar-Second/dp/007161169X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1300431298&sr=8-2
  
  and
  
  http://www.amazon.ca/Big-Silver-Book-Russian-Verbs/dp/007143299X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b
  
  Yes i know, spending money sucks, but i bought all three of them and not regret my choice at all. Very practical.
  
  Speaking of spending money, if you have money to spend, spend it on a private tutor for both of you. The value of this cannot be stressed enough. He will explain things to you that books can't and will correct your pronunciation and also challenge you by having higher degrees of conversation (like the use of dative instead of instrumental, etc) so that you learn in deep and not just "to get by".
  
  A huge part of language acquisition is the exposition to culture. The longer you expose yourself to russian, the faster and better learners you will be. That means listening to russian music, watching russian videos and movies, reading russian news and get interested in what's happening int he country, speaking russian as much as possible. Immerse yourself in it.
  
  If you do all of this and you really, really dedicate yourself to it and use your couple as a blessing rather than a curse, i guarantee you that in 6 months, your level of russian will be that native russians will not believe you when you will tell them it's всего шесть месяцев :)
  
  Hope this helped, good luck with your russian!
  

I had just finished Grad school, and I didn't have a job and was living at home—that helps :)

But basically I would wake up, repeat words I learned the previous day, then learn another 30 or so (I have a decent memory). Then I would go over a grammar topic for a few hours then try to watch something. The only thing I didn't do was talk much (I wrote lots) because I had no money for a teacher and don't like talking to random people.

But to be honest I just become obsessed with Russian and it became my job (for the first year, anyway. After that I had different strategies as I started working etc). Sometimes I spent 12 or more hours on it a day.

I used this book for the vocal—https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Learners-Dictionary-Words-Frequency/dp/0415137926

Hey, this is the book

https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Learners-Dictionary-Words-Frequency/dp/0415137926

I bought this book, which you might find interesting:

Russian Learners Dictionary

The words are listed by their commonness, so you will learn the most common words first.

It's a little annoying because a lot of really obvious words are in there in the beginning (Я, Ты, и, или, etc) but then it starts to get interesting.

If you can get through that whole book, you will have a vocabulary of 10,000 of the most common Russian words.