Language proficiency levels in Russian

How long does it take to learn Russian?

Quite often we can see eye-catching titles like: “Learn English in 2 mionths”, “Japanese for 30 minutes a day”, “Czech from zero to B2 in a year” and many other like that. They make us believe that learning a foreign language is a piece of cake and the one can easily manage that in a couple of months.

Can you learn Russian in two months? Unfortunately, even if you spend 2-3 hours studying daily, two months won’t be enough. Especially challenging this process is going to be for those who do not speak any other Slavic language (e.g. Czech or Polish). And also there is one more important issue to solve before setting any deadlines.

How can we divide Russian into levels?

The defenition “to learn Russian” is pretty vague itself. For somebody it may imply being able to say ‘hi’ and ask how the things are, meanwhile somebody means by that speaking in Russian easily about job and their last vacation. To avoid this misunderstanding, common standards of Russian language proficiency were accepted to help to define the language level of the learner.

There are the following learning levels in Russian:

• A1 – elementary (Beginner / Elementary)
• A2 – basic (Elementary/Pre-intermediate)
• B1 – threshold level (Intermediate)
• B2 – post-threshold level (Upper-Intermediate)
• С1 – advanced speaker level (Advanced)
• С2 – native speaker level (Native Speaker).

The levels of Russian are described in detail and approved on a state level by a special committee of Russian Federation. You can learn more about them on the website of M. Lomonosov Moscow State University.

It is important to emphasize, that Russian language levels categorization is slightly different from that in Europe. For example, Russian standard A2 perfectly matches European B1/moderate B2. The learner achieved this level is able to read articles on the Internet, watch TV programs, make new contacts and talk about work.

When developing our one-of-a-kind system, we were keeping in mind those two different language mastering standards. So we divided each level from Russian system into 2 or 3 modules. In the chart below you can find our own module system for learning Russian and the number of academic hours necessary for mastering each module.

Level		A1		A2			B1
Module	I	II	I	II	III	I	II	III
Number of ac. hours	96	96	96	48	48	96	48	48
Total per level	192			192			192

In the table you can see that to start speaking Russian in everyday life, meaning bulding simple phrases and sentences, you are going to need 192 academic hours (45-minute classes). Depending on the studying workload intensity, they can be taken within a time period from 3 to 12 months. A basic studying plan includes two 1.5 hour classes a week, 2 academic hours each, during 12 months. The intensive studying plan includes 4 academic hours a day 4 days a week.

For each module and language level various studying intensity levels are possible. Here in the chart below you can see the options we offer at our language school.

Hours in a module	96 / 48	96 / 48	96 / 48
Course type	Standard	Intensive	Medium
Hours per studying day	2	4	2
Days a week	2	4	3
Course duration	6 mos / 3 mos	1,5 mos / 3 w	4 mos/ 2 mos

Here at the link you can see the next course launching. You can join the nearest course possible and if your progress is fast enough it is possible to transfer you to a next level group.