Learning Russian can be an important useful skill. Despite being overshadowed by the economic rise of China, Russian exports of oil have strengthened its economy and led Russia to be the energy producing powerhouse of Europe. Russian remains known for its military manufacturing and Russian oil exports continue to buttress the importance of Russian on the world stage.  Russian is spoken by 164 million native speakers and over 100 million additional speakers it remains an important language culturally and in business, despite the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

Russian can open doors to employment in a variety of occupations such as in virtually any business related to oil, teaching, translation, and interpreting.  In the United States it can also lead to an increase rapport with Russian employees that may be learning English or with contacts in companies abroad. Learning Russian greatly improves your chances of success in job market dealing with these economies. Learning Russian can be a fun task, as well as an important one.

Even if your just a casual traveler, learning it can also be beneficial since most of the sign boards and instructions are naturally written in Cyrillic though the appearance of English signs is increasing. Studying the language to order food, communicate with locals and talk with taxi drivers will enhance the experience of your travels significantly, if travel is your primary goal.

Studying Russian is one step to joining the ranks of businesses oriented toward the growing market found in the former Soviet Republics. Russian is one of the great languages of the world. Learning the language is becoming part of a world-class education. Russian is spoken in Russia and throughout the former republics of the Soviet Union, as well as in communities of Russian émigrés.

Russian is not an easy language to learn and there is no single method can insure that the proficiency will be achieved without investment of time. So it’s important to vary your resources to insure that you maximize your language learning experience. Learning Russian is one of the most complicated languages to learn for most English speakers given the Cyrillic script used.

Choosing the right course or methodology is of course critical and that can make learning the language a relative cake walk or much more difficult. Much importance should be given to the accent and pronunciations.

Studying Russian doesn’t require expensive personal tutors. So you want to be careful not to end up paying more money than is necessary. It is an ongoing and involved process. While you can't learn the language overnight, you can find resources that may give you an edge time wise and simply the amount of effort you exert.

A critical challenge to remember is that of vocabulary. Having used various books and courses to learn to read Russian I found several to be of benefit. The most valuable ones were those who made sure to present new vocabulary first. In the case of Russian, the most time will likely be spent on the script. Then a short story utilizing this new vocabulary in conjunction with previously learned vocabulary was presented. In terms of audio, a variety of excellent courses are available including the Pimsleur Russian course.