Customer Reviews

Nachalo, Book 1 (Bk. 1)

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

 

 

I have been teaching Russian for 11 years and have had difficulty finding a good first-year textbook. Golosa left me wanting more, so I thought I'd try Nachalo. Big mistake. The dearth of logical, simple, and effective first-year Russian books is the main reason I am in the middle of writing my own first-year Russian text.
This book is organized in a haphazard manner, the logic of which I have yet to discern. For example, some of the grammatical cases (genitive, accusative, etc.) are covered over 2-3 chapters - and not always consecutive chapters - and the information is given out piecemeal. This is frustrating for an experienced instructor and I know from my students' comments that it is even more confusing for them.
Another problem is that this book is long on pictures and little cutsie-pie dialogues, but short on useful exercises. There are other problems as well, but the issues I outline here are enough to recommend to anyone considering this book to look elsewhere.

Although I gather that this textbook is one of few Russian texts for English speakers to include extensive multimedia activities, and that is why it is often chosen, I would have dispensed with them to have a more organized text.

This book did not present grammar in an organized way-- a single case might be taught over three [not consecutive] chapters, and the adjective endings for two or three cases crammed into one. There were comparatively few grammar activities, and the vocabulary learned seemed dictated by the activities of the characters in each chapter, whether or not this vocabulary was generally useful.

In the second chapter, for example, much of the vocabulary is the names of instruments and musicians-- but we never learned body parts or colors. Telling time and the date came several chapters later; phrases that might be useful for traveling were spread out across the entire book or never encountered at all.

At the end of a year of Russian study with this book, I've retained almost nothing, and it isn't just me-- everyone who took the course with me felt that the text was confusing and placed emphasis on the wrong material. Although I had an hour of instruction in this language four days a week, it was still a struggle to use what I'd learned in any meaningful way, despite having learned two other languages and picked them up relatively quickly. Having used several other language texts at the same level as this one, in two other languages, this text is hands-down the worst.

I imagine that this book was once a clever, cohesive text. It was smartly combined with audio materials and a marginally competent artist. Then a large storm/animal crashed through the writers' office the night before the final copy was due. The authors threw together whatever pages they could find without severe damage in the morning and called it a wrap. And then they gave it a worthless index.

The result? You're up at one in the morning searching for an thorough explanation/examples of the instrumental case and you have to dig through 300+ pages to find it, closely inspecting each page because new cases are introduced at random points in the book (and on the top, middle and bottom of pages and in similar black text) and "instrumental" isn't in the index. Oh, "chess" is in the index, "backward buildup, principle of" is in the index. But case forms? Not so much.

I love languages (I'm a foreign languages major). I love learning languages.

This book does not help.

This is the book that was required for my college Russian class for beginners. Our professor is actually from Russia so maybe that helps making the book seem better for us?
It has a good amount of exercises in each chapter so you can get a better feel for how to form certain words or sentences. It also has a lot of dialouges and passages you can read to practice your reading skills.
Overall I think the book is good. Maybe since my teacher is Russian, she knows how to teach from the book better and that's what makes it seem okay to me? Because I am seeing a few negative reviews.

Nachalo, Book 1, is the textbook for Beginning Russian. The directions are easy to understand and to follow. Of course the student has to learn the Cyrillic alphabet first in order to read the text.It is helpful that each chapter gives explanations in English for the exercises that use the Russian vocabulary. The student learns formal and informal greetings, days of the week, months of the year, numbers and other useful information. I recommend this textbook for use in the classroom. It comes with a CD on which the chapter dialogues are recorded.

My class has been using the Nachalo series for two years now, and have also tried other russian study books as supplimentary information. While some other books had better exercises, the Nachalo series had much better discriptions and much more vocabulary. overall, we came to the conclusion that the Nachalo series is one of the best language learning series we have encountered.

Belltower shipped textbook in a clear plastic bag. Book was more beat up then expected (possibly because it had absolutely ZERO shipping protection. Took 3-4 days for a response to the TWO emails I sent. And once they finally did respond, it was with the same identical generic message. Wouldn't suggest Belltower to anyone. I purchased 3 other textbooks on Amazon at the same time as the one I purchased from Belltower and had a great experience. I'd suggest using a different company than Belltower, then maybe you will get your text book in the proper shipping box or envelop and not a sealed clear plastic bag!

So far I have only gone through the first chapter because I am taking a course that is not intensive. The book is fine if you need to learn everything from scratch, like the alphabet. Definitely you will need some lessons too in order to be guided through the book. Even though the order is logical and it has a story, you can fall in errors that only a teacher can correct early on.
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Overall good asset if you are into learning the language and committing to it.

I think this book is pretty good at teaching a student Russian, as long as the student has a fluent speaker teaching the material.