S201-205 Homework: advice about learning Russian

You have seen the following announcement in an international student magazine:

We are looking for essays that give advice to foreigners about learning your language. In your essay,

• suggest some ideas that will help foreigners to learn your language better;
• mention what you think the main difficulties will be.

Write an essay of 200-250 words (on a separate piece of paper or by e-mail) in response. Use the following plan:

• write an introduction (state the topic, explain what you will do in the essay)
• make your suggestions, illustrate them with examples and results
• list the main difficulties and give reasons and examples
• write a conclusion 

Some ideas and phrases for your essay:

• talk with native speakers
• rules and exceptions
• alphabet and spelling
• to conjugate verbs (verb conjugation)
• to decline nouns and adjectives (declension of nouns, pronouns, adjectives); cases ("Russian has six cases.")
• cognates and false cognates (false friends--English-Russian and Russian-English)
• slang
• articles ("Russian does not use articles")
• word order
• verbs of motion
• perfective and imperfective aspects (совершенный вид, несовершенный вид)

Note: In your introduction you can talk about "learning the Russian language," but afterwards you can simply say "learning Russian."

Please give me this homework next week (Wednesday or Friday). Thank you!