Hello! My name is Andrei, and I'm a professional theater director and educator from Saint-Petersburg, Russia. I teach theater all over the world... - in Europe and the USA, and I teach Russian online for anyone who studies Russian and loves Russian culture. Learning and teaching languages is my passion. As a theater director, I interact with Russian language and Russian literature on daily basis, so, when teaching Russian, I strive to share my love of it and spread my knowledge. No less than Russian, I love English, which allows me to communicate with the world. In 2018, I won a Fulbright competition and as a Fulbrighter and Visiting Scholar I taught Russian theater techniques at two American universities - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and The University of Illinois at Chicago. This experience helped me improve my spoken English and convinced me that language is a powerful tool for cultural exchange. Qualifications & Experience As a tutor, I've been teaching Russian online for about 2 years. During this time I've taught around 50 students - from beginners to advanced. Among my students I have had an American military pilot, an American embassy officer in Kazakhstan, dozens of college students, and others. I've gained some experience in diagnosing student problems and finding effective tactics to improve their skills. As a person who was trained a lot in voice and speech class during my studies in the Saint-Petersburg State Theater Arts Academy, I can also help you significantly improve your pronunciation. Teaching Approach I believe that it's not enough to learn grammar and vocabulary to master a foreign language. One has to be immersed into a real language, a language people really speak, which is always different from those versions we encounter in various textbooks. On the other hand, it seems to me important to show students higher examples of the Russian language - the literary language. It's essential to know which speech sounds good and to distinguish it. I mainly rely on conversational practice. However, as to their homework, I strongly recommend students to listen to Russian speech using various videos and podcasts, and I give them four special techniques for working with these types of materials. I firmly believe that listening can create the basis for future communication skills. There's no doubt that children begin to speak imitating the speech of their parents. During my lessons I use "Russian in Exercises" written by S.A. Khavronina and A.I. Shirochenskaya - a book published in 2014, which became a bestseller among those who teach Russian as a foreign language, "53 Models of Russian Grammar" by T.M. Dorofeeva and M.N. Lebedeva, various exercises, tables and games, as well as interviewing and retelling. Read more