Would be better if you can tune up to listening simple conversation . Unlike English generally, Russian pronounce what they write.

I haven't learned Russian, but German and Spanish. I like listening to music to keep my language skills up. I've found podcasts of German news specifically for non native speakers, maybe you can find similar in Russian. Don't stress on understanding every single word. I feel like that will come with practice and time. Just get the gist of what's being said. I also like to pick up kids books and videos to give me practice; those will have simple words and sentence structure to help you work up to the big stuff. Best of luck in your learning!!

Lots of luck on reading their cursive !

I agree that it's a good idea not to focus too much on trying to ram the grammar into your head, but you do have to keep looking at it to remind yourself of how the cases work and interact with prepositions. I worked through four Russian courses (it took that much revision) before I reached the point where I could start trying to read a proper book in Russian. I then found an HTML file copy of a translation of one of my favourite children's books (Swallows and Amazons) and set about reading that in order to run lots of phrases through my head at high speed, and that led to rapid progress with understanding the language, although it wasn't really fixing the grammar in my head, so I probably need to slow down and look more carefully when I get back to it (work got in the way, so it's on the shelf at the moment). It's an enjoyable way to work though, and it quickly reveals where the biggest deficiencies in your vocabulary are, because you'd think those four Russian courses would have covered all the most common stuff, but no: simple things like "up" and "down" were entirely new to me. Anyway, that's the approach I've used in the past for other languages to get my understanding close to fluent, and it's much easier to work on your speaking ability once you have a near- fluent understanding.

If you're struggling to find something to read and fancy a book about children sailing on a lake and camping on an island, I can send you a copy. You don't need a copy in English (or any other language) to read alongside it because putting it through Google Translate a few sentences at a time is just as good for making sense of it. (It would obviously be better to read something written in Russian, and I've also been reading Tolstoy's Детство which I managed to find a printed copy of in a shop - I compare it with an English translation which I found online, but I obviously can't send a copy of the Russian version down a wire.)

That's good advice for learning any language, at least any Indo-European language.

Welcome aboard! I can't help with Russian but I hope you'll enjoy the topics in general.