Frequently Asked Questions

AUDIO FILES

Where can I find the audio files?

The audio files are now freely available for download here.

ORDERING INFORMATION

Do you offer any discounts?

Yes! If you buy any five items or more from our online shop you are eligible for a 10% discount. This will be applied automatically at the checkout.

Is the course available online?

Yes! We have partnered with Classoos, where a licence for an electronic version of the textbooks can be purchased. Perfect for remote learning!

I would like to order for a school or university. Can you issue an invoice or do I have to pay in advance?

We are happy to issue an invoice to academic institutions in the UK. Please select this option at the checkout. Please note that we would ordinarily expect to ship such orders to an institutional address and for the customer email address to be an institutional one.

I am based outside the UK. Can I still buy your books?

Yes, but you will need to order from our distributor, Bay Language Books, at www.baylanguagebooks.co.uk (from July 2023).

SUITABILITY OF THE COURSE

I'm learning Russian independently. Is this course suitable?

Yes! If you are motivated to work hard and make progress then you will do so with Red Square Russian. However, the course was designed to be used in a classroom setting. Russian is not the easiest language to learn and the vast majority of people will require a teacher at some stage.

I'm not interested in taking GCSE. Is this course still suitable?

Yes! This course is for those learning Russian from scratch who want to make quick progress and get well on the way towards mastering the language. It is suitable for beginners in any setting. This course includes examples of many GCSE-style activities, but this is incidental, rather than being the course's raison d'être.

My children are half-Russian. Is this course suitable for them?

Yes! We use it with our own children. However, you will probably wish to supplement it with other materials.

I'm not a teenager. Is this course still suitable for me? 

Yes! The books are aimed primarily at teenagers insofar as the people who feature in the exercises are often teenagers, but not exclusively so. This is also the context in which I teach, and the book is the product of my own teaching experience in the secondary classroom. People of all ages have used and enjoyed the Red Square Russian books since Book 1 was first published in 2018.

OTHER QUERIES ABOUT THE COURSE

Do these books follow the exam board's published scheme of work for GCSE?

No, but care has been taken to ensure coverage of all GCSE topics and more.

What level does book 1 / 2 take a learner to?

A learner who has mastered the material in book 1 will already be at a good GCSE level, but will not have covered all the vocabulary topics and more advanced grammar (such as the relative pronoun).

A learner who has mastered the material in book 2 will be at an excellent GCSE level and have a very strong grammatical foundation for further study.

What, then, will Book 3 cover, and when will it be available?

Book 3 will be an A level coursebook that covers the topics of the current A level syllabus. Regrettably, the project is currently on hold. There are a number of reasons for this, but primarily this is because the terrible war in Ukraine and ongoing instability in the region make it difficult to produce materials that will still be relevant in a few months' time. In addition, the demands of my full-time job are such that I currently have little time to work on this complex project. RSR3 will see the light of day at some point, but please bear with me.

Why didn't you include stress marks?

Anyone who has learnt Russian knows that stress is difficult. It is difficult because it is so fickle: it often changes in different forms of the same word (e.g. singular / plural; nominative / genitive). However, Russian is difficult in many other respects and stress marks are a distraction from the key business of declining nouns and conjugating verbs correctly. They are not included in authentic Russian texts, and in my experience weaker pupils can mistake stress marks for accents and start copying them all over their work. The best way for pupils to learn the correct stress is to mimic their teacher and the audio recordings. An undue focus on stress, which most pupils can get right most of the time without difficulty, can be overwhelming for learners facing a new script and some rather difficult grammar.

If your query is not answered above, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us via the Contact page.