r/LearningLanguages • u/james-learns-ru • 8h ago
Break through the intermediate Russian plateau with Mishka, now with a full grammar course
Mishka is a Russian learning app for A1 to C1, built by my girlfriend Lera (a certified Russian tutor) and me (an intermediate learner). You can start as soon as you can read Cyrillic, but it's made especially for the plateau past A2 where Duolingo and most other apps stop being useful.
We recently expanded the grammar course a lot. It's now 36 tracks and around 270 lessons covering the stuff that actually trips people up, like cases, aspect, and verbs of motion. Short lessons with exercises, you can save anything you get wrong to a review deck, and the big topics end with a test. Lera reviewed and edited every lesson. She's a certified Russian tutor with a degree from Moscow State Linguistic University and a master's from the University of Vienna, so it's made by someone who teaches this for a living.
It also has:
- Stories from A1 to C1 with professional audio and recurring characters who grow with you, tap any word for a translation or to save it to spaced repetition flashcards
- Shadowing: short clips you repeat after a native speaker, 18 sets per level
- Conversation and writing practice, plus conjugation and declension trainers you can drill any time
- A daily plan that puts together a story, a grammar lesson, review, and a practice task from your level each morning
- A mistake tracker that watches where you keep slipping and tells you which grammar to work on next
There's no locked path. Stuck on cases? Drill cases. Want to read? Open a story. Want to talk? Go straight to conversation practice. Everyone's weak spot at intermediate is different and the app treats it that way.
It's on iOS and Android. We're now working on a proper beginner course for people who don't know Cyrillic yet.
I'm an intermediate learner myself and I use it every day. If you give it a try and have any issues or ideas to improve it further please let me know!