Russian As A Foreign Language: Let's Play

When students start studying Russian, they often have to face some difficulties such as long words like nothing on earth, complex and not always understandable grammar, strange letters, and hard-to-pronounce sounds. How to understand and memorize all of this, start communicating with native speakers and get an education at a Russian university? How to improve communication and grammar skills in a relaxed atmosphere? What you need here is a game.

Headteacher at Private Russian Class online school Lyudmila Ramilevna Zakorchevnaya talks about the games you can play with your foreign friends, native Russian speakers, or even in a class with your fellow students and teacher.

Game Snakes and Ladders

This well-known game suits you perfectly if you are not acquainted with other players or don't know them well. You'll have the opportunity to make friends! 

Gameplay

To play the game, you must have a game board, six-sided dice, and eight dies or coins, if there are eight players. The teacher also prepares a list of questions for players to answer when they land on a corresponding square with a number.

Then you decide who has the first turn. You can roll a dice. And the player who throws the highest number starts the game. The player to the left of the first player has the second turn, and so on. If the player lands at the base of the ladder, they climb to its top. If the player lands on the top of a snake, they slide down to its tail. The person who is the first to reach the last sector is the winner.

The game is suitable for students with any level of Russian language proficiency. The questions can be very simple, for example, about your family, or about what you like to do in your spare time. Students who have started studying Russian as a foreign language quite recently can answer in one short sentence, and even give a one-word answer, but in Russian. This is considered a good result. Intermediate or advanced level students will give a full answer.

Game Who am I?

This is a very funny and useful game that will help you develop spontaneous speaking skills.

Gameplay

One player takes a seat in front of the others. On their head, the player wears a headband with a card where a word is painted or written in Russian. This can be a vegetable, fruit, footwear, domestic or wild animal, profession. The player's task is to guess what is on the card, asking questions that can be answered "yes" or "no" only. For example, "Am I a thing? Do people wear me? Am I expensive? Am I a kitchen appliance? Am I hot? Am I cold? Am I a fridge?" Each student takes a seat in the center in their turn.

You needn't decide on the winner but you can agree that the one who has guessed the word asking the least number of questions becomes the leader.

Game Make up a dialogue

Each dialog can aim to go through one or several vocabulary or grammar topics in detail.

Gameplay

The teacher chooses any dialog suitable for particular students participating in the game and cuts it into lines. If this is a lesson on Russian as a foreign language, the teacher divides students into pairs. It is ideal to write letters, symbols, synonyms, or antonyms on small sheets of paper and fold them up. Then each student takes a paper and finds their pair. For example, the player with the word "hot" is looking for the partner with the word "cold."

Each pair gets a dialog cut into lines. The task is to make it up quickly and in the correct order. After all the students complete this task, the teacher asks them to take roles and read out the dialog. Based on the dialog made up, students can act out their own dialog. This can be done impromptu or can take 5-7 minutes.