Names and identifying details of every student here are changed, as they are everywhere on the blog.
When I certified as an English teacher in Russia I did everything a sensible person does. Wide reading, grammar drills, practice tests on the sections I found interesting, months of it.
The listening section that nearly cost me a certificate
Recordings in the real exam played once. Only once. At home I had replayed the audio the moment I lost the thread, because obviously you would, and eight months of doing that had trained me into a reflex the exam does not permit for a second and which I had no idea I had built.
I had prepared for the content and rehearsed the wrong conditions.
That is the whole difficulty with this exam, and it is why strong Russian and a failed certificate turn up together more often than anybody expects.Five subtests, and the one that decides your outcome
This exam breaks into five parts and you have to pass every one. Grammar and lexis are examined on their own, then reading, then listening, then writing, then a spoken section with an examiner in the room.
Fail any one of them and the certificate doesn’t arrive until you come back and retake it, however comfortably the other four went. Up to two failed subtests are retaken on their own; more than two and you sit the whole exam again, and either way you pay the full fee.
A student came to me eight weeks before her attempt at the second certification level, which is the B2 tier. Her reading was genuinely strong, her grammar better than mine at her age, and she had never once written a formal letter in Russian. I’ll pick that up as I go, she said, about the only subtest she had never practiced. Names and identifying details of every student here are changed, as they are everywhere on the blog.Your level is the lowest of five numbers, not the average of them.
What the six levels are
| Level | Russian name | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| A1 | ТЭУ | Survival phrases, present tense |
| A2 | ТБУ | Everyday exchanges, past tense |
| B1 | ТРКИ-1 | The first tier most people are told to aim for |
| B2 | ТРКИ-2 | University study, professional work |
| C1 | ТРКИ-3 | Translation, journalism, editing |
| C2 | ТРКИ-4 | Comparable to an educated native speaker |
Take the level structure from the internet. Take everything procedural from the center you are registering with.
Where people lose it, and why it is always the same two
Speaking and writing, almost every time.
Both are productive skills, both are impossible to practice by consuming Russian rather than making it, and both are precisely what somebody studying alone will quietly skip for months without once deciding to. Reading feels like work and is comfortable. Writing a formal complaint about a delayed delivery is neither. I understood the task and I had no idea what shape the answer was supposed to be, one student told me after a mock attempt at the writing subtest. He was not short of Russian.He was short of the genre.
That is learnable in weeks by somebody already at level, which is the encouraging half of this. The discouraging half is that no amount of reading will do it for you.Eight weeks, spent unevenly
Sit a full mock of all five before planning anything. It takes an afternoon, and it is the only way to find out which subtest is your floor, since almost nobody guesses correctly.
Weeks two through five go to that weakest one, most days. Weeks six and seven go to the second weakest, with short format drills on the remaining three so that nothing goes cold while you are busy elsewhere. The final week is not for learning anything: two more full mocks under time, nothing new, no new material.
Still can’t write these, my student said at the end of week three, which was true and also the point of week three. The second mock felt like paperwork, she told me the week before the exam, and that was the sentence that told me she would pass. Every student since has sat at least two mocks under real conditions. I already know the format, one of them told me last spring, and then lost eleven minutes of the listening section to a question he had stopped following.A format you have never rehearsed will cost you more points than the Russian you do not know.
One thing worth knowing before you commit eight weeks to any of this. If the certificate is for work and not for study, most private-sector hiring treats it as a tie-breaker and not a qualification. That changes how much preparation it deserves. At Palme School we teach adults online, in groups of up to eight, two forty-minute classes a week, and the first two lessons are free. You can book those here, and there are printable materials for learners in our resource library.Frequently asked questions
It is the Russian state testing system for Russian as a foreign language, with six levels matched to the European framework. Universities, employers, and immigration authorities recognize it, though what each accepts differs and should be checked with them directly.
Most people are pointed at B1 or B2 depending on whether the certificate is for general purposes or for study and work. Take a full mock before deciding, because the level you can pass is set by your weakest subtest.
If your Russian is already at the level, six to eight weeks is usually enough, because what you are learning is format rather than language. If it is not at the level yet, no amount of exam preparation will close that gap.
Writing and speaking, for nearly everybody, because they are the two things a person studying alone almost never practices and the two the exam will not let you avoid.
Palme School: Russian for bilingual children · Conversation school · Free materials
Lily Rozberg has been teaching for sixteen years, first English in Russia and now Russian to bilingual children across the US and Canada. She writes for Palme School about heritage language, reading, and the things report cards do not measure.
