• Learning Russian is like opening Russian 'Matryoshka' dolls: full of hidden suprises!russian doll image by Alison Bowden from Fotolia.com
  
  Learning foreign languages is a major investment of time and energy. Today's computer technology can help boost language skills further than conventional means in a shorter period of time, and several programs offer a wide range of support when trying to learn Russian using your computer.
  
  

Declan's Russian Flash Cards

• Declan Software offers a shareware program that aims to increase your Russian vocabulary. It includes English-Russian and Russian-English translation exercises, listening exercises and typing exercises, as well as native recordings of every word's pronunciation. A free 15-day trial of the program is available before purchasing, and you can download the main product directly into the demo. According to the Declan Software website, this program costs $32 as of 2010.
  
  

Professor Higgins Russian Without Accent!

• IntraSoft's program aims at improving your accent to a native speaker's standard and tests your inflections and pitches against native Russians in a large variety of words. It includes online instructions in English, Russian, Spanish and German as well as a dictionary and Russian proverbs. This program is available for purchase in Russia and Germany or on the Internet. According to the Professor Higgins website, the program cost about $13 as of 2010.
  
  

Rosetta Stone: Russian

• This program uses a style of teaching which Rosetta Stone refers to as "dynamic immersion," meaning you are given a series of pictures and are told what they mean and how they sound. The program then asks you to reselect the activity or objects presented from some other pictures. This program features voice recognition exercises to aid your pronunciation and audio CDs to use on your stereo or iPod. If purchased directly from the website, the product comes with a six-month guarantee. As of 2010, the program costs around $200 for one of the three different levels of difficulty or $485 for the whole set.
  
  

Transparent Russian Software Complete Edition

• This program, according to the Transparent Language website, will "immerse you in the Russian language" through interactive videos, games and stories. The Transparent Russian Premium Edition concentrates on your writing and verbal skills, while the Byki workplace uses flash cards, tests and performance checks to review your progress. Another feature included is the Alphabet Exploder, which allows you to split up a word and find its meaning through its prefixes and suffixes. Five audio CDs and an iTunes upload are included to aid learning on the go. The Transparent Language website sells this product at around $180 as of 2010.