Hello dear friends, followers, and students of Russian! Welcome to my world of Russian language studies!
My name is Nikolai Tishin. I live in Krasnodar, Russia, with my wonderful family, which includes my lovely wife and two great little buddies – Mark, my younger son, and his little brother Daniel! My friends would tell you that I have an open, easy-going personality, and always a friend to my students. In fact, being a friend of mine is almost a requirement to being one of my students.
My passion for languages started while in university, where my major was English, and second language Arabic. I studied five years there and then did three years of postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Russian Language and Methods of Teaching. After eight years of study, it was time to spread my wings, and I spent a good part of (what year?) living and travelling across America, I realized I had chosen the right path in life; learning and teaching languages. I continued learning foreign languages and fell in love with Spanish, which I extensively trained myself with the help of YouTube videos, podcasts, books, etc.
At some point, though, I realized I needed some instruction and guidance, so I took private classes with a native Spanish speaker from Peru. This helped me a lot, and when I first traveled to Spain, I was pleasantly surprised that I could freely communicate with locals (there’s nothing more challenging and rewarding than when you talk to a person in his own language and you are able to understand him and you are understood).
I then went on to work as an English teacher and translator for large businesses for several years, then started my own language school in Krasnodar where I have been teaching English to Russians and Russian to non-Russian speakers. I went online fully in 2018 when, after doing a lot of marketing research (marketing and design is my other passion), I come to the conclusion that online education was the way of the future.
Since then, working with people from all parts of the world has, and continues to give me great joy; I really love my job.
To help my students and followers learn Russian faster, easier, and in a more natural way, I started writing and adapting stories that would help them. I have been writing stories since I was a schoolboy, and this amazing work I do now has given me a chance to continue to do things, such as writing, that I love to do. These stories are written at different levels, so students of Russian from beginner to expert can learn new words and better memorize the ones they've came across earlier in contexts and lessons. I provide audios for each story, and students can download them from my BOOKS page.
Throughout my teaching career I have realized that learning a foreign language the natural way is actually the best way to learn!
The Russian language is a little different from most European languages, so the approach you probably used in grade school to learn Spanish or German might not work here. For instance, I have never met a person who learned to speak Russian by first learning only the grammar. However that’s what most students believe they need when they first start working on Russian. I firmly believe you should learn grammar through reading, hearing, and speaking Russian, not by hours spent on grammatical exercises. Just using it in the context – listen, repeat, read, repeat and apply!
Of course students should refer to written rules for better comprehension, but if a student doesn't listen enough, or read enough, or doesn't have enough speaking practice, they will probably never master this beautiful and widely-spoken language (166 million people, to be exact)!
Find native Russian speakers and talk to them, watch videos, listen to podcasts, and immerse yourself! Get friends on social media and work, work and work! I promise, you will soon see the difference!
Good luck you all, my dear friends! I will see you in class!