Message from Internet

[Jerry Ervin]

Irena Ustinova writes, "It's difficult to generalize but I found out
that many American students are much more anvanced in reading and even
speaking skills than in understanding oral speech of native Russians."

Agreed.  In my experience, too, it's not uncommon for students to say that
they speak Russian better than they understand it.  Paradoxical at first
(one would expect the active production of speech to be more difficult than
the receptive comprehension thereof), the fact is that when one is
_speaking_ one is in control of the vocabulary and structures one uses,
whereas in _listening_ one is at the mercy of such choices as may be made
by the speaker.  If the speaker is not used to dealing with foreign
learners, there are virtually no constraints on the vocabulary, structures,
cultural references, pragmatics, and implicit assumptions about context and
shared knowledge that the foreign interlocutor may encounter in a very
short time.

In writing/reading the situation is the same, but the foreign reader of
native-language writings has one significant advantage s/he lacks in an
oral exchange: the reader is (usually) in charge of time, hence s/he can go
back and reread whatever s/he finds confusing.

This, of course, is not unique to Americans learning Russian; it applies to
any interchange between a native speaker of any language and any learner of
that language.

Jerry Ervin