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25 Russian traditions and habits

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What will I learn here?
 The resources in this unit present the opinions of the foreigners who spent some time in Russia and are sharing their – both positive and negative – experiences and reflections on the Russian traditions, habits, and everyday life.
What language level is it for?
 All resources on this page are in Russian and are best suitable for students with advanced proficiency; however, the support materials include both Russian transcript and the translation of the Russian transcript into English.
Other notes:
 Some ideas:  Use these resources and tasks to create a list of Russian behaviors and traditions that would be difficult of easy for you to adapt to. You can also create a phrasebook with vocabulary, phrases, and concepts.

!!! This page contains multiple interactive H5P resources — they might not display in all browsers — read more here 

Quick links:

Resource 1: Video 1 and tasks: In this video, Briget is talking about her observations of habits of changing from the outdoor shoes and clothes, going on walks in Russia, the cleanliness of the metro and how wishing a happy birthday is different in Russia.

Resource 2: Video 2 and tasks: In this video, Justin talks about the concepts of the Russian friendship, hand-washing habits and standing in queues. After the video, you can practice your reading and translation skills in the task that presents quotes about friendship from real Russian-speaking people.

Resource 3: Audio 1 and tasks: In this podcast, the speaker who is a Russian immigrant in the U.S. reflects on the differences in the concept of friendship.

Resource 4: Use these tasks and tips to learn how to toast in Russian.

 

Resource 1: Video 1

Task: After watching the video, respond to these multiple choice-questions that list various behaviors and traditions and ask whether these are really taking place.

 

Task: In the video, the narrator talks about ways to wish something to the birthday person. Below, see a list of various wishes and try to match them to the images. To check your answers, slide the slider across the image to see the correct responses.

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Resource 2: Video 2 and tasks: In this video, Justin talks about the concepts of the Russian friendship, hand-washing habits and standing in queues.

Note: In this video, not everything Justin says is correct in Russian. Most phonetic mistakes were transcribed with the correct versions, while some lexical mistakes were put in italics and the correct form is included in [ ].

Task: After watching the video, you might wonder what Russian people think about Justin’s observation. In the image gallery below, you will see a selection of comments on his video. Try to understand what the message is saying, then click on the next message to check your guess/translation.

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Resource 3: Audio 1 and tasks: In this podcast, the speaker who is a Russian immigrant in the U.S. reflects on the differences in the concept of friendship.

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Resource 4: Toasting in Russian.

Task: Watch these videos that provide tips for creating a great toast in Russian. 
Note: see the additional resources below the video if you don’t have advanced knowledge of Russian to understand the videos’ content.

Task: Look through the examples in the gallery below to give you some ideas on creating a good toast in Russian.

Task: Watch these videos with real-life examples of toasting, toasts from movies, and humorous toasts.

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Preparing Russian-language learners for successful careers in the federal government and NGOs Copyright © by Anna Kolesnikova is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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