I feel your pain on Russian verbs. I find there is such a contrast with Portuguese, where a lot of focus is given to choosing the right tense, understanding the differences in tense usage between English and Portuguese, getting the conjugations right, etc. Whereas in Russian, there is so much else to learn that verbs get relegated. I keep finding that I know the verb I want, I know the infinitive forms, often I know which of the imperfective/perfective forms I need to use ... and then I have to guess the conjugation (which often turns out to be wrong). I'd be interested to see if you get more informed responses, but my completely amateur-ish thoughts are as follows.
* Here is a list put together by Ruslania for practising verbs. I've found them really good at sending to the UK:
https://ruslania.com/en/recommendations/1544-russian-verbs-theory-and-exercises-for-russian-language-learners/* One of the books listed there is the
Big Silver Book of Russian Verbs. From the pages I can view, it seems to adopt a similar approach to the
Russian Verb Drills online course I have, in that it divides the verbs into groups and then has model verbs for each. My understanding is that there are various different methodologies, with no agreed number of groups said to exist. So it seems you need to pick a resource and stick to it. I did see a throwaway comment from a RFL university student online somewhere to the effect that they learnt new verbs by seeing which group it fit into, so perhaps this is how Russian is taught academically to English-speaking learners? I think I have seen the silver book in a reading list for courses, but I can't remember which. My issue is the same I have for the rest of Russian - there is just so much to learn that it is hard to get anywhere! I kind of see the route I need to follow, but, realistically, it's a good few years of work! So I know I should work more with
Russian Verb Drills, but there is so much else I need to do too that I am not getting round to it. I have just seen, however, that two verbs I struggled conjugating this week belong to the same group, so perhaps that is the answer: drilling verbs as they come up, hoping that with time you end up covering more and more.
* There seems to be a dearth of just basic conjugation practice. Most of the books in this list focus on aspect, or verbs of motion, or prefixes, rather than just plain vanilla conjugation. So your attention is always divided; there is more than one point of grammar you need to get right each time. Again, I think this might just be an unavoidable function of Russian being hard.
* I'd also put a good word in for the
Let's Improve our Russian series. Book 1 contains drills on aspect, verbs of motion, reflexive verbs, participles, gerunds, and numerals. As above, the focus in not on practising conjugations per se, but by dint of what you are asked to do, you do get a lot of practice anyhow. Personally I really like them, but then I do like an "old-fashioned" textbook (having lived through English school modern language teaching where explaining why a "der Bahnhof" suddenly became "den Bahnhof" was guarded as though it were a state secret and we only ever were given photocopies out of random books, this is my form of rebellion). I am finding, however, that going through everything at least twice is going to be necessary - I feel it's stuck and then a few weeks pass and .... всё исчезло (to use one of the verbs I knew but couldn't conjugate properly this week - I wanted the е to be an ё).
* I've been working on prefixes with a teacher recently (with her own materials). It is good in developing a bit more of a sense of the internal logic of Russian, but, again, it feels as though it's a topic in its own right, quite distinct from conjugations. For verbs of motion, I've made my own crib sheets, in which I focus on how the verbs are conjugated (which groups they belong to), including where the stress falls. This then supplements the focus in books on which verb to choose. I've based this off the
Let's Improve our Russian 1 book, but have had to make my own as that book doesn't mark stress, even though the moving stress on conjugated verbs is both completely illogical and important!