Customer Reviews

Learn in Your Car Russian: The Complete Language Course [With CD Carrying Case for People on the Go and Travelogue DVD] (Russian Edition)

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

 

 

The basic premise of Learn In Your Car Russian (LIYCR) is to have an audio-based learning program which does not require book study, so it can easily fit into people's daily schedules while they engage in other activities. There are 9 hours of audio teaching 600+words for the entire course.

Level One is heavily oriented towards the traveler, and addresses important issues such as, transportation, money, hotels, finding your way around town, numbers, restaurants, shopping, time, schedules.

Levels Two and Three go beyond survival words and phrases, increasing vocabulary and developing core grammar skills.

STRENGTHS
I've been to Russia about 15 times , and can state that LIYCR teaches very useful vocabulary and expressions for a person who is actually going to put their feet on the ground in Russia

This is one of the few beginning study courses which does not shy away from the difficulties of Russian grammar for the English speaker. It gives practice in all tenses for verbs and all 6 Russian grammar cases for nouns. Also, this is one of the best courses I've seen for using a restricted vocabulary in almost all available grammar permutations, making it very good at showing how to form natural Russian sentences.

WEAKNESSES
There are few conversational dialogs and no real story lines, so there's nothing here to particularly capture a person's interest. It definitely takes some fortitude and motivation to go through these rather dry lessons.

For the absolute beginner, LIYCR is rather rough. There isn't very much repetition (unlike Pimsleur Russian), and the pace is very rapid fire. The result is that acquiring the presented vocabulary of 600+ words from the audio alone is difficult. As suggested by another reviewer, augmenting your studies with flash cards is very beneficial.

LIYCR does have a small booklet with the Russian alphabet, pronunciation guide, and transcripts with translations of the spoken dialogs. However, it is really beyond the scope of the booklet to teach a person how to read Russian.

This leads to my major criticism of LIYCR - if you are a total beginner and couldn't understand something from the audio (highly likely), the booklet doesn't offer much help since you can't read Russian either. Although the course's stated objective is to be a completely audio based program, it IS necessary to refer to a booklet, and the course does not prepare you to read the booklet.


WHO WOULD BENEFIT FROM "LEARN IN YOUR CAR RUSSIAN"?
For students with some prior knowledge of Russian, this is a good addition to your study program. For what you get, the value is quite good. However, it is not a stand-alone course, and you will need other study materials. It really shines at developing intermediate grammar skills and providing a practical vocabulary for the traveler.

Although I have studied for years, I still use LIYCR (mostly levels 2 and 3). It's great practice for pronunciation and reviewing fundamental grammar skills used in everyday speech. I've had numerous compliments from surprised Russians that I don't have a foreign accent and that I seldom make the usual grammar mistakes of an English speaker. I credit LIYCR for much of this (Pimsleur Russian being the other main contributor).

WHO DOESN'T WANT TO BUY THIS?
For a one time traveler to Russia, even Level One LIYCR is probably more than you want to invest time wise. Buy something such as the book "Russian in 10 Minutes A Day" to learn how to read maps and signs in the Russian alphabet, plus a phrase book/audio CD.

For an absolute beginner who is seriously interested in learning Russian and wants a completely audio-based program that truly lives up to it's claims (i.e. doesn't need a book or other 3rd-party study materials), I recommend just going straight to Pimsleur Russian, and coming back to this afterwards. The 2 courses complement each other well, and Learn In Your Car Russian is more appropriate for someone with some prior knowledge of Russian.

While it is certainly true that if you are willing to pay more you will get a more comprehensive course, this is exceptional for the price. However I would not recommend basing all of your studies on these CDs for a number of reasons:

1. There is to little on reading and writing Russian
2. There is an emphasis on learning vocabulary word for word or short phrases and not conversationally based
3. There are no grammatical explanations

As a supplement or refresher this course is superb and I provided you keep these caveats in mind, it is HIGHLY recommended that you buy this course!

I've been using this for a while now, and while it's not nearly as good as the Pimsleur method, it's much cheaper and has its uses. The lessons are very short in duration, so you can use these CDs on your shorter trips in your car.

If you're willing to put forth a bit more effort, I would advise taking the time to make flashcards of the vocabulary on the tapes as you go through the lessons. There are booklets that come with the CDs that have this information. If you use them in your spare moments, it'll help with retention and also help you learn the cyrillic alphabet.

While I can't really recommend any non-Pimsleur "listen only" method as a stand alone product, as part of a larger language learning program these CDs could be useful.

I have yet to find a single Russian course that is complete by itself, and this one is no exception. I agree with others that Pimsleur is great, but comparing that with this course is apples and oranges. Pimsleur is great for learning basic verbal conversation. This course is great for learning and expanding vocabulary. Neither is really designed to effectively teach written Russian. To each his own, but I would never agree that this course is worthless or worth only one star. If you fully understand what the course is and what it isn't, I think you'll appreciate the value it provides. If you accept that repetition is necessary to learn vocabulary, you'll go a long way in enjoying what this course has to offer. I can understand why some might call it monotonous, but I never found it so because I accepted that listening and repeating was the only way to learn. And as others have mentioned, my friends in Russia have complimented me on my pronunciation, and for that I credit this course.

I got a lot for my money - more Russian lessons than I will be able to master. I am a 65 year old rank beginner! Russian has sounds none of the other languages I know have. It is daunting. I loaded Learn In Your Care Russian CD's into my Ipod so they go everywhere with me and after 4 weeks i am up to lesson 6! But the pronunciation comes through very clearly on these CDs. I'm afraid that the local speakers in different parts of Russia have very different accents.

This program is hardly worth the price or time. It presents the language in a disjointed, illogical, unstructured, non-intuitive way. Basically, they rattle off an Engligh word (spoken by a male) or phrase once then the Russian version twice (spoken by a female), then on to a new word or phrase. They never explain anything or build upon what's been used. And there is no variety in the Russian speakers to further train the ear.

Russian is a complicated language for people whose native language is English or any of the languages with a Latin/Greek/Germanic base. There are complicated consontant combinations and word/sentence structure that are very different from what is customary for English, Spanish, French, German, etc. This program spends no time explaining pronunciation, structure, cases, conjugations, aspects, gender differences...any of the fundamental parts of Russian. They just unload words and phrases at the listener and expect the language to stick and grow in the mind. It doesn't.

Some sort of intuitive organization is desperately needed in this program. I've tried several courses, including Berlitz, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, and Living Language and this one really fails compared to others. It misses the mark completely. It's not even a good reference or addition to other instruction because there's no structure or flow. It's as if they picked up a traveler's phrase book and read it into a microphone, skipping the explanations between the phrases or sections.

Don't waste the time or money on Learn In Your Car Russian, not even just for a refresher or to fill in gaps from other courses. It's too basic and poorly put together to be useful.

I have used several language learning programs and this is the least helpful one I have ever seen. Only one Russian speaker (female)and English translator is male.. no conversation, no context, difficult to learn. I feel I wasted my money. Pimsleur is much better, although it lacks reading skills.

This course is great when you are doing something else and can only listen because it gives you the English and Russian. You don't have to be looking at a book to use it which is nice because you can listen anywhere...in the car, working around the house, or at the park with your kids.

I purchased quite a few russian courses being determined to learn it. This includes the penguin course, the CD based courses by both rachel farmer and the one by daphne west, and this one. Of the CD based courses, so far I like this one the best.

I must say that I have really enjoyed this course to date. I have not completed it yet, but it is a great way to build one's russian vocabulary to the point where you could converse and get around in russia. The included manual contains the english and the russian cyrillic which I find helpful so as to see how the words are spelled in russian.

At least in the early lessons, there is not much addressing proper grammar, as russian grammar is different than english, but I think that this is addressed to some extent in the later lessons. I am using the penguin text as well to supplement this and they do complement each other well.

This is an excellent product for the price paid. You will not learn all aspects of the language, but you will learn a broad range of words and phrases that are practical, well-paced, and distinctly pronounced. One could not expect more for the money.