Some useful links for students of Russian as a FL

[zveriozha.livejournal.com]

Reading this community I sometimes wondered what good online resources can be recommended for students of Russian and found out that there aren't too many of them on the web, at least compared to ESL resources. Anyway they do exist. For example -

Some nice and easy games for Russian students. (requires java)
http://www.dotty-dingo.com/RU/Contents.htm

Chat topics, news and texts with downloadable MP3 files.
http://www.tasteofrussian.com/

A fast test of your level.
http://www.lidenz.ru/testing/Testing.php3?config=data/test1.cfg

Some easy topics and games for beginners.
http://www.hello-world.com/Russian/EN_Russian.php

Pretty solid test (diagnostic placement test).
http://russian.speak7.com/russian_test.pdf

Online phrasebook. Just a phrasebook, but you can also listen to sentences, and it's not badly organized.
http://www.waytorussia.net/WhatIsRussia/Russian.html

There were others but I've chosen several I liked from a teacher's point of view. Hope it'll be helpful for you, guys. Enjoy learning Russian. ;--)

и было за что

[roselyndoll.livejournal.com]

A sentence from an article I am reading:
финны любили русского императора - и было за что.

I didn't understand the "и было за что" part. Could somebody explain it? Thank you!

пожалуйста

[alekhi.livejournal.com]

Is there a rule where "пожалуйста" is placed in a phrase to make it more polite?

ex: Дайте, пожалуйста, кофе с молоком.

And why the use of commas? Does anyone know?

--алекхи

Children's Stories

[alekhi.livejournal.com]

As a человек, который только начал изучать русский язык I thought it would be good practice to read some lighter material such as Russian children's stories. I found a funny little illustrated collection online:

Russian Children's Stories

Just thought I'd share.

--алекхи

Language test

[olydiagron.livejournal.com]

Heres a fun russianlanguage test... but the words are mostly of greek and latin origin, so it will give non native speakers a confidence boost!
http://aeterna.ru/test.php?link=tests:20367