Our Russian: Aptitude or Ineptitude?

As Matt explained in his last blog post, much of the work we do here in St. Petersburg is in English. This is because most of our colleagues speak English and/or because we cannot perform at a high-level in Russian. Today, I found myself at work with a little time to kill when a meeting we had scheduled was canceled. So I was reading articles online, exploring a few Russian learning sites...and viola, I found a language school that allows you to test your Russian language skills online. I was actually surprised by how much of it I understood; unfortunately, I also realized how much of the minutiae of the grammar I have forgotten since the end of our Russian classes back in December. 52 questions, and a small headache later, I found out my level of Russian: 25 out of 52 or "pre-intermediate," which they define as follows:

You are familiar with common structures of Russian grammar, and your level, which we would describe as pre-intermediate, allows you to understand Russian in personal and social contexts, to react accordingly in everyday situations and to express your opinion on topics of personal and common interest. Accuracy and knowledge of peculiarities of Russian are subject to further improvement.

In my typical competitive style, I then encouraged Matt to take the same test. He managed to score 7 points more than I did, which isn't surprising, considering how much more effort he has put into learning Russian than I have. His added effort landed him in the next category up, "intermediate:"

You are able to communicate and convey precisely what you want to say in everyday living situations. You understand written and conversational language on a range of personal and social topics. For further language training we recommend to work more on passive, negative and other specific grammar constructions, train fluency and building longer and more complex syntax structures (e.g. impersonal constructions, sentences with indefinite/generalised subject, expressive word order). Well done!

On one hand, I'm bummed that after 7 months here, I can't speak Russian as easily as I would like to be able to. On the other hand, considering that it's one of the world's most difficult languages and that I didn't know one word of it a year ago, I feel better than at least I can understand, if not speak. And for once, I can graciously admit that my husband is better at something than I am.