Basic. Three. Hey, teacher, leave us kids alone. Just kidding. Last week, I was tired of installing JRE and started playing with Anki (暗記 Jap. memorization). It is cross-platform, free and, bingo,  you don’t need JRE on your computer. It uses the spaced repetition study concept. I imported a deck from Pauker to Anki on my Xubuntu.

Why should we use Anki for sentences and not just vocabulary? Because we don’t speak in words, we speak in sentences. Learning sentences teaches us grammar with words at the same time.

Your first 1000 sentences should be in Russian and English before you switch to English-English. Do not translate the sentences to Russian in your head.  Your goal is to understand the sentences, not translate them. Example sentences from dictionaries are simple but bland. If you use Twitter you’ll read tons of tweets before finding your perfect example.