The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a great way to build Russian vocabulary. Kristina talks about context, and the story provides context to the words used. That was an unexpected but welcome benefit to me for reading this book. I read Tom Sawyer when I was young, but you don’t have to be familiar with the story beforehand to enjoy this. There is a lot of dialog in Tom Sawyer, which is another help to build vocabulary, case agreement, and tenses. Dialog often is a question-and-answer format or statement-and-response, and that style helps build vocab and grammar recognition. There are times when I recognize a word standing alone or in a list, I will know what it means, I know I have learned it but I don’t recall it for that moment. But reading a story lends context to the word and gives me a better feel for the usage. When you think about it, it is probably the way you learned your own native language. I highly recommend The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Certainly for beginning learners and also for intermediate learners who have a good store of vocabulary but can benefit from a ‘usage’ exercise. If you are in that beginner-intermediate range of Russian language students, you will not regret getting and reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
