Customer Reviews

Beginner's Russian (Teach Yourself (McGraw-Hill))

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As this was my first time with learning Russian, I found this to be a great book and well coordinated with the tape. You have to read the book in order to follow the tape, but that's pleasant enough.

The only thing that marred the experience for me was that the tape got mangled very easily - in machines that I have used for other language tapes before with no problems. Whether it was my fault or the tapes were defective would be hard to prove. What I found discouraging, however, was that my fax to the company requesting replacements (at my expense) was never answered.

So, I would highly recommend this book, but be careful with the tapes. You may not get a second chance!

The Russian alphabet is different and this book does a really good job of teaching it, but you really need a cassette to help you pronounce the words.

I love this book and I don't understand why it isn't getting better reviews- it's well put together and more fun than any other introductory book I've used. I am a translator (of German) and have taught English to many Russian speakers, and what I love about this book is that unlike others, you practice all four skills: reading, writing, speaking and verbal comprehension--and comprehension is really where this book (and the excellent tapes) come into their own. Some of the other books like Nicholas Brown's or the Routledge workbooks or Schaum will be much more helpful if you want to understand which prepositions take the genitive case (and these are great if you want to keep going with Russian), but uh... if you just want to be able to ask for directions to the book store and actually understand what people are saying to you, this is a great course. And the author has a sense of humor!!

I thought this book was pretty good to begin with, but it seemed to get worse as it went along. The vocabulary and teaching methods in the later lessons were lacking, and the book is chock full of simple editing mistakes, such as mistaking 120 for 200 (Unit 14, Key Words #1)... such mistakes can really throw you off when learning... this book might be okay for the casual language learner for travel, but overall pretty mediocre.

I would recommend Penguin's "Russian Course" by Nichholas J. Brown and Oxford's "Russian Grammar & Verbs". Both are much more attuned to serious language learners.

I use this textbook a lot teaching Russian. It has all the basic things you need to know to learn convers.Russian.

I think it's an easy way to basic learn. You can start your first vocabular leasons. The tapes are clear and useful. The tips for alphabet and sounds are easy.