Undecided questions
Learn the alphabet

as you are asking about learning the alphabet, the best way would be to learn the Russian letter and its correspondent sound which is shown in English words. In such a way, you can learn the Russian sound comparing it to its English counterpart. For example, the Russian letter "в" corresponds to English "v" as in the words: "van, vest, vet", etc. Though, not all Russian letters have English correspondent sounds. For instance, the Russian letters "ы, ь, ъ, " have no English counterparts.
You should repeat words and phrases when you are learning and practicing the vocabulary itself.

In Russian, as well as in English, what is written is not what you hear. If you want to learn Russian alphabet, the first thing you have to keep in mind is that most Russian letters sounds differently in different positions. For example, the letter "Б" normally represents the sound [B], but when it is the final letter of the word, it sounds like [P].
Here are some of my presentations that I made in order to help my students to get accustomed to the Russian alphabet:
http://www.slideshare.net/eugeniavlasova/russian-alphabet-5476845
http://www.slideshare.net/eugeniavlasova/russian-with-logos-5565447

Also, here are Russian rules of reading:
http://blog.properrussian.com/2010/12/rules-of-reading-in-russian.html

Good luck with learning Russian!