Tere! This means “hello” in my native Estonian. I have taught this word countless times to the students in my Estonian language classes and spoken it in all the following classes during these past seven years that I have been teaching Estonian. My name is Riina Roasto, I am an Estonian language teacher, a translator, and a PhD student in Finno-Ugristics at the University of Vienna.

I commenced my teaching career more than ten years ago. I have worked as a lecturer of Estonian language and culture at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv in Ukraine, at the Tallinn University in Estonia and in numerous language schools. Currently, I am a freelance linguist based in Berlin and teach Estonian online.

It is sometimes believed that Estonian is a difficult language. If I were to ask my students, they would answer that Estonian is easy. It is important for me to introduce a language as a simple logical system that is easy to understand and use. As a teacher, I structure my classes and deliver knowledge in a clear and engaging way, combining theory with practice. Besides my endeavours to make my classes useful, I aspire to make them entertaining and fun, so that my students have a great time in the lesson. By teaching students from a wide range of learning techniques, I always try to provide a personal approach to each student and adapt to their needs, so that they are able to continuously improve their grammar and vocabulary.