My first year of Russian at university At the beginning of Russian lessons we were in 52, but now many students decided to change their course. Many of them went to Portuguese or French because they are considered to be easier than Russian. One girl applied to Law because she had an opportunity of working connected to Law's sector. All this is normal if you think we're at the first year of university, but I suppose there are other reasons. Our Russian teacher used to be very rude with us. She couldn't just say "you are wrong", but she added something like "you are not able at all". In first weeks she pretended we knew exactly how to read. There were some shy girls:they were very afraid of reading in public and they had to know how to read because otherwise she could say:"you read very bad". It was not encouraging at all and many times I was tempted to avoid her lessons. I used to think that was better studying alone at home. I couldn't ask any question and we had to read a lot of times the same page. She never added something connected to cultural aspects, like idioms or words that could be useful if you plan to go to Russia. So in the end I and my friend were very disappointed. We took two weeks for studying Russian together. In the end we had both 29/30. We studied all the programme and I think I could also avoid going to this course. Now I feel upset because I know I didn't learn a lot and in summer I'll go to Moscow. These lessons are in little groups because you have to have a lot of conversations with a mothertounge speaker and exercices for practical life and knowledge. I didn't have all what was supposed to be in the programme, but I think my summer experience will be very good for improving my Russian level.