Russian I
Russian I tests Cyrillic reading, gender and case endings, basic verb conjugation, preposition choice, and short text comprehension. Because Russian has no articles, the exam concentrates on endings and on which case a verb or preposition requires.
Core patterns
- Nouns have gender: masculine, feminine, neuter. Endings change by case: книга (nominative) → книгу (accusative) → книге (prepositional/dative).
- Common cases: accusative for direct objects; genitive after нет and many prepositions; dative for recipients; instrumental after с and by means; prepositional after в/на for location.
- Verbs conjugate by person and number: я читаю, ты читаешь, он читает.
- Word order is flexible because case marks roles; neutral order is subject–verb–object.
- Prepositions govern cases: в/на + prepositional for location, в/на + accusative for direction; с + instrumental for “with.”
Worked example
“Он живёт в Москве.” The verb жить is followed by в for location, and location after в takes the prepositional case. Москва becomes Москве. If the sentence were “He is going to Moscow,” it would be в Москву (accusative), showing direction.
Traps
- Do not rely on word order alone; the ending identifies the object.
- Learn spelling rules: after к, г, х write и, not ы; after ж, ш, ч, щ write и/а/у as taught.
- Aspect pairs (читать/прочитать) are not interchangeable; perfective often views the action as complete.
- Verbs of motion have unidirectional and multidirectional forms.
- Stress can change vowel quality; unstressed о sounds like а.