Experienced Russian Tutor

Yelena F.

Professional and Creative

Yelena is a pleasure to work with, and makes language study an enjoyable process! She's always prepared and on time for lessons, and follows up from every lesson with a short summary and homework. I appreciate that Yelena caters every lesson to my ability level and is flexible with my work schedule. Highly recommend!

Angela, 29 lessons with Yelena

Phenomenal Teacher

I cannot recommend Yelena highly enough. Each lesson is engaging, interactive, and perfectly tailored to my level and learning pace. She has made the entire process enjoyable and is a pleasure to spend time with during our 60-minute sessions. If you are looking for a knowledgeable and dedicated Russian tutor, look no further!

Ian, 6 lessons with Yelena

amazing!!

I had a great time and learned very much. We got straight into the important stuff and it felt like there was no time wasted at all.

Alex, 8 lessons with Yelena

Very literally the best teacher I've had.

Yelena is without a doubt the best instructor I have had. She is always patient, prepared, and a joy to learn from. I love that she brings Russian culture and history into the lessons. She is understanding of my schedule and has been extremely flexible and generous with her time. She is extremely qualified, and in my opinion her price per lesson demonstrates a love of teaching. I look forward to every lesson and I firmly intend to continue my lessons with her for years to come. I cannot recommend her enough to anyone who wants to study this beautiful language.

Aaron, 40 lessons with Yelena

Outstanding language tutor!

Yelena is perhaps the best language teacher I have had in nine decades of studying 15 languages. That's why I have cleaved to her for nearly 200 tutoring sessions over eight years. Her patience, such as when I make the same mistake in three consecutive sessions, is exemplary. When I am unprepared on some topic, she quickly finds an alternative to keep our session interesting. She is flexible in scheduling, in selecting study materials, and in changing on short notice the focus of our sessions. She even constructs challenging homework, and corrects it carefully, on her own time. Yelena is not only a well-trained and experienced teacher, but also a born teacher. Whether the challenge of the day is to understand an allusion in a classic prose work, or to converse with a hotel front desk clerk, she never lacks for examples, nor for illustrative printed, audio, or video resources. A native speaker, of course, she is also a highly educated scholar who brings her considerable background to the tutorial.

Peter, 193 lessons with Yelena

The Best!

Yelena is very patient and attentive to the needs of the student. She is incredibly knowledgeable, and puts things into a helpful context. It is a joy to meet and study with her.

Fr. Ephraim, 27 lessons with Yelena

Great first class!

Yelena was exactly what I needed. She’s professional, knowledgeable, and very experienced. She asked questions so she could better understand what I needed. She was very patient, and I can’t wait to learn from her on a weekly basis.

Jon, 2 lessons with Yelena

Excellent teacher

Yelena -- excellent tutor. She has a wealth of PowerPoints she can pull up to address specific topics. An hour-long lesson is (for me) just right. It's hard work but not overwhelming. One example of her deep knowledge: I studied Russian many years ago, and always had trouble with the letter "o." She identified the problem (that is easy for any native Russian speaker), but then she told me the names of two cities where my pronunciation is close to normal. That's a deep level of knowledge. Addition after seven lessons: The more I work with Yelena, the more I realize how good she is. She has a great ability to tailor the lessons to my desires. We started off doing a lot of conversational work, but as time has progressed we added cultural material (e.g. Pushkin and other poets) and plain-old-grammar. Also, this is a big plus: I use the notes she sends me after each lesson to create flashcards so that I can review the work easily later in the week.

Miles, 10 lessons with Yelena

Yelena F. Is very thorough.

Yelena F. was very helpful in giving me an understanding of the Russian language. She is very thorough in passing along her knowledge of the language. She is always very patient. I can highly recommend her.

Anonymous, 44 lessons with Yelena

Highly recommended, very patient and knowledgeable Instructor

Yelena has been my instructor twice a week for Russian lessons via videoconference for six months. She is always extremely well prepared, patient with all of my questions and provides lots of helpful, encouraging feedback. She can adjust to either do a deep dive into grammar and very technical points or simply teach you helpful and useful words and phrases - she has the knowledge and experience of an instructor to adapt to the student's individual needs and goals. I would highly recommend Yelena for anyone who hopes to tackle Russian.

Luke, 112 lessons with Yelena