Customer Reviews

Colloquial Russian (Colloquial Series)

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As a foreign language teacher, I am always picky when choosing materials to teach myself a new foreign language. I was pleasantly surprised with this book. Many books just spend a lot of time repeating random words or tediously try to explain the very complicated Russian grammar BEFORE you even get to start speaking the language. What I liked about this book is that it teaches you these things but through a realistic, written dialogue. They use many cognants (words that sound the same in both langauges) to start you off and have a handy vocab key next to the dialogue in case you cannot figure something out. The grammar and reading comprehension activities following the dialogue are thorough. I also like how the chapters of the book are divided up by theme or topic rather than grammatical concepts. You will, however, get much more out of the book if you have the accompanying cds.

This book does a very good job of condensing the Russian Language into practical, usable dialogue. It includes enough grammar to aid in accurate speech, but not so much as to be imposing, which is one of the greater challenges of the Russian language.