The Very First Russian Language Lesson

How do we usually start our studies with the students who are complete beginners?

I start my lesson usually with going through the alphabet. Even if a student says that they don't want to learn Cyrillic I would strongly recommend doing so: it is not difficult! But it gives you such freedom – you can learn the language on your own and you can read!

After the alphabet, we study the pronunciation of specific sounds and do a few exercises. Very often it takes a while to teach the pronunciation of a tricky letter «Ы».

And then we read our first simple words in Russian.
The second and the last part of the lesson is learning a few useful words, such as "Hello!", "Bye-Bye!" And "Thank you!"
The lesson lasts for 45 minutes.

I have a student who likes to meet via Skype just for 15 minutes 5 times a week during his lunch break though I make sure he has a lot of homework for the weekend to consolidate the knowledge.
Спасибо и до встречи,
Эльвира