How to learn them?

...Yes, they are six. Is it many? Yes, pretty many. Two more than in German, for example, and many more than in English. So it is not a surprise that one of the most common questions students of Russian ask is the following one: "How to tackle them?" In this post  (as well as some following ones labelled as 'learning tips') I would like to share some tips which you may find useful. Some of them my students found to be such, and some came from my own language learning experience. Have fun!

1) Read and listen to native speakers as many as you can. Here I must notice, there are different kinds of reading. Let's skip scanning and skimming, they're of little help if our aim is to learn grammar cases (we will talk about these two kinds later on). The most helpful here is intensive reading. When reading intensively, you focus on grammar forms (and sometimes vocabulary). It's the slowest type of reading and it may be not such exciting as extensive reading, which will be talking about in the next paragraph. However, it might be fun, too. Just remember: to read a many-page tome intensively may be not such a good idea - you're likely to get bored. Instead, try to read intensively short messages, like ads or news headlines. Where to get them? If you're living in Russia, you're likely to find a lot of information of this kind just wandering around the city - you will see a lot of advertisement posters, promo flyers etc. Alternatively, you may go to a cafe or a small restaurant - in addition to the menu (which may be a good source of grammar information itself) you can find free papers there. What to do if not? I may suggest you to use Russian search engine Yandex: you may find news headlines, TV program etc. just on the first page of the site! So use everything you see to learn: if you see a new verb-noun, a preposition-noun or a noun-noun combination, pay your attention to which cases are used. Try to learn some phrases - ones which you like or find useful - by heart (you may want to write it down, it'll help a lot), and then... just use it!

Extensive reading, which I promised to devote a couple of lines to, is reading for general understanding of the text and, in the end, for pleasure. If you're an advanced student, you may read Russian papers or books just for pleasure. Here, however, you may use the same technique: whenever you see a construction which draws your attention (perhaps, you like what it means and want to remember it, and perhaps you've never seen this word combination before), take a minute to it, it won't be a waste of time.

A couple of words about listening.  The same method works here: just try to listen to native speakers as much as you can (you may see movies, for example), and try to remember the grammar cases used in this or that context. Write something down. It may seem complicated for beginners, but the more you listen, the better you understand. There is no other way to learn to understand, but this one is a great one - just find movies (at first, you may read subtitles, as you see, if you have a DVD) and music you like. 

2) Learn the questions. It can save you a great deal of time if you learn the questions to the nouns in each case. Not only you'll be using them naturally, but you will also learn the constructions we have talked about more easily. For example, in the coffee shop menu you can see  "Кофе со сливками" (sometimes we use "со" instead of "c", for example, when the following word begins with "c" + another consonant). Instead of learning something like "a noun in the nominative case + the preposition "c" + a noun in the instrumental case" you can just learn "что с чем", so you will know which form is used after the preposition "c" (so you will be able to say, for example, "чай с сахаром"). Later you can always remember the case. The funny thing is, Russian people use the cases naturally (as all the native speakers of whatever language do with their grammar features), so we don't remember the case table. However, in some complicated cases when we don't know exactly which case we need, we always ask the questions. Here they are:

Cases	Questions to animate nouns*	Questions to inanimate nouns*
Nominative	Кто?	Что?
Genitive	Кого?	Чего?
Dative	Кому?	Чему?
Accusative	Кого?	Что?
Instrumental case	Кем?	Чем?
Prepositional case	Ком?	Чём?

*animate nouns normally refer to people, animals or other creatures, while inanimate one refer to ideas, places, things.

3) '3R-rule': read, remember, repeat. This is what I call '3Rs'. After you read a thing you'd like to learn (for example, a construction including a noun in one of the oblique cases), you need to remember it. If you write it down and repeat in immediately, you will remember it for some time. For example, in a cafe you can order "что-то с чем-то", for example, кофе со сливками, суп с шампиньонами, сэндвич с сыром. Later you can ask your friend to make you some tea with sugar (чай с сахаром). So try to use it whenever you can. Some teachers suggest you repeat the word or construction you want to learn at least three times: immediately after you read or heard it, the day after this, and one week after. If you managed to do this, you're likely to remember it forever. If not... well, you still have it written down, so just refresh your knowledge! Personally I suggest you use it as many time as you can. After some time you'll be able so see, how much times you need to learn it.

The only difficulty here is, if you're a beginner please try to use the words in more or less the same context as you read or heard them. As you learn, you will find out in which contexts this or that word may be used.

So, that's it for today. Looks like, we finished the 'preparation stage', so now we can move on to learn each case in particular, keeping in mind these learning tips. See you next time!