Russian Anki Cards

I started making these cards to help me learn Russian in 2011. Over the next 2 years I made around 5000 cards. I kept to the same principles as I used for my English cards: using visuals and a sentence to generate context, providing audio to aid pronunciation and intonation, providing grammatical information at the bottom of the card. I’ve sorted them into 6 levels as follows:

Level 1: These are Pre-Intermediate to Intermediate level cards with general vocabulary.

Level 2: More Intermediate cards with general vocabulary and grammar. I used the book ‘501 Russian Verbs’ for some of these cards. I also used my Oxford Russian Grammar book.

Level 3: I used the excitingly named ‘Тесты, тесты, тесты’ (2nd / 3rd certificate level) and other ТРКИ materials to make this deck to help me prepare for my 2nd certificate exam. It contains quite a lot of participles, collocations and idioms.

Level 4: These are cards I made to help me prepare for my 3rd certificate exam, so approximately Upper-Intermediate level. I used the 3rd certificate book of ‘Тесты, тесты, тесты’ and more ТРКИ materials.

Level 5: More Upper-Intermediate level cards. I used the book ‘750 Russian Verbs and their uses’ to help me find contexts for some words. Also, I made cards from the textbook ‘Окно в Россию’ which we used in my Russian class at the time.

Level 6: These are Advanced level cards. Some of the cards in this deck are a bit obscure.

I recommend that Russian learners edit and improve these cards as they use them. It’s easy to add explanations, translations or other details. Learning by actively engaging in the process is more effective than merely being a spectator.

I made about half of these cards myself, but I had various Russian friends and teachers help me edit them and make the audio files. The other half were made by my friend Lena, who I employed to turn the two books of Тесты into cards. I’m very grateful to her and to all the others who helped me make these cards. I hope you find them useful!