I was amazed to find a comment on the blog when I returned to it, but I don't know enough about blogging to know how I could respond to the comment privately! Anyway, I was puzzled as to why living in Russia it wasn't easy to practise - or perhaps do a 'language exchange' session sometimes. Anyway, for some ideas, do take a look at the discussion we had about this on our discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/ilearn2 - it's a forum about independent learning.

Meanwhile, I should add that one reason I wanted to try and support my daughter was that she isn't very happy about the classes she is getting at University. It seems she is in a mixed class with people who already know some Russian, although it is supposed to be an ab initio group. Then she has one teacher who goes very slowly and another who assumes they know more than they do - and she gets the idea the teachers don't talk to each other. And then, there seem to be issues like departmental photocopiers breaking down and Coombers not working for weeks on end - plus the fact that the resource centre (I've seen it) is very traditional, with very out of date materials (not packaged in a user-friendly ILC way) and there is no VLE - in fact it seems as tho' the department doesn't use computers much at all! And this is at a top UK University!

Anyway, she is coming to stay for 3 weeks and one of our plans is to work on the Russian together, but I will try and learn the alphabet before she gets here (after I have put the Xmas decorations up and made some mince pies).