Customer Reviews

English Grammar for Students of Russian: The Study Guide for Those Learning Russian (English grammar series)

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Great book. It will help you identify what parts of English grammar you've forgotten because you've never needed to discuss it.

Suddenly, in Russian class, you must identify parts of speech and tenses and so on. The understanding of our grammar is so very important in the successful learning of Russian. Russian uses its grammar to identify the function of words in a sentence. That is - the subject pronoun could appear anywhere in a sentence. The verb could, too. The adjectives could be thrown anywhere. (This happens mostly in poetry, but it's occurred in those terribly long sentences in periodicals and books.) It's the declension of the word that lets the reader/listener know if that word is the subject pronoun or the direct object pronoun, etc.

In order to keep up with the complexity of Russian, you must know English grammar first. That way when you are trying to identify parts of a sentence, you will not be slowed down by having to figure out what the instructor is talking about when she refers to grammar "you should know" since you've learned it in elementary/jr. high school.

BTW, I learned to speak, read and write Russian first on my own, then on an advanced level in college and grad school. I do not believe Russian is a difficult language. Teachers tend not to teach students how to learn it properly.

Then this is the perfect study companion for native English speakers learning the Russian Language! I used this book while in college earning my BA in Russian and found this book to be invaluable during my studies.

This book covers basic English grammar in the simplest of terms in short concise lessons that we'll help students learn Russian easier. Lots of examples are given in both English and Russian on the grammar being discussed in each chapter. At the end of each lesson are exercises to test your knowledge on the grammar topic discussed with an answer key key at the end of the book to see how well you learned the particular grammar topic that was discussed.

As a teacher of English as a foreign language, I have found this book to be invaluable when a Russian-speaking student is particularly stuck on a grammatical area. A small example: A student of mine was frustratingly unable to remember to include articles in her sentences. A glance at page 13 made this more understandable: there ARE no articles in Russian!

I haven't used this book enough to say whether it is great overall or not, but I *can* say that each time I have used it, the knowledge it has given me has been worth the price of the book.

This is one of the most useful books for the teaching and studying of elementary Russian language. So many students today have no grounding in English grammar and, because Russian is an inflected language (noun cases, little word order), it is crucial that the terms of grammar and the patterns of English be understood before and while a student learns the declensions and grammatical necessities of Russian. Great book!

This book (actually one in a series of books; others are study guides to Spanish, Latin, French, Italian, German, Japanese, and a 'reverse' book for Spanish speakers learning English) is unique in its concept...the examples are generally well thought-out and easy to understand. In the attempt to be very concise, the material was limited. There are few examples given, and the accompanying grammar information such as all the Russian personal pronouns is not given in the chapter pertaining to each topic. One must refer to a textbook for this. I realize that this book is not a replacement for a textbook, but for better and faster learning, having this information in table form, along with more extensive examples using all different forms of, say, the personal pronouns, would be very helpful. I still highly recommend this book. I wish I had had it two years ago when I started learning Russian on my own.

This book was issued to us before we started learning Russian. I already know English grammar very well, but the majority of students in my class did not. It's really hard to understand why you're going to use the accusative case in Russian if you don't know what a direct object is in English. The best foreign language learners are already proficient in their native language. We spent a lot of time going over English grammar, and I spent a lot of time tutoring English grammar to my classmates. The book shows a side by side comparison of Russian and English structures which are helpful in illustrating what is really going on in sentences. Instead of just buying an English grammar workbook, get this too.

I really like the book. it's really helpful in not only refreshing my memory of the english grammar I have learned in the past, but also good in helping me learn the sentence structure of Russian. The only thing is that I wish it went into more depth very brief on each topic! Still, overall a great but Thanks!

As someone who has recently began studying Russian, I've bought 4 general grammar books, including this one. After having read through them all, I have to say most of them are pretty bad for explaining basic grammar and sentence structure. This one is the best of the lot, and actually shows you how sentences are structured and gives a very good explanation of some of the more annoying and difficult aspects of Russian grammar, such as "cases."

Most other books I've read-even when claiming to be "beginning" books-have very little beginner info in them. They go from extremely basic sentences ("this is a book") to fairly complex sentences almost immediately, but there is no good, practical, beginner sentences in them. For example, "I went to the store," or "I want to buy a book," or "I am watching TV."

This book isn't perfect, and it really isn't meant to be a full-fledged grammar book, but it seems to be the one I am coming back to the most for the nuts and bolts of basic grammar. Given the fact it's quite cheap, i'd say you really have nothing to lose here. Give it a try.

I wish there was more information on the cases for Russian but besides that, excellent book. Extremely organized and easy to read- in a great format. Anyone that is not very familiar with English grammar should get this book.

I've been studying Russian for the last two years on my own, and when I got to the grammar part, I was totally confused. I have a regular Russian grammar study book, but I wasn't getting too far. This book helps you understand Russian grammar by first explaining how the same concepts work in English grammar. It's written in a very easy, basic way. Not overly technical. I'm so glad I got this book! I'd still be stuck without it.