Customer Reviews

Russian: A Practical Grammar with Exercises

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When it comes to volume of information, Terence Wade's book (A Comprehensive Russian Grammar) is better, but I think Pulkina's style is superior. For me personally, Pulkina's book gave me a better understanding of the genitive plural than did many other books, and this is also true for the three types of declensions.

One thing that makes Pulkina's book stand out is that it is useful for students on all levels. Some grammar books are excellent in content, but are too complicated to be of much use to beginners. Pulkina, however, is readable enough that even beginners can get a lot out of it, yet deep enough to be a useful reference for more experienced speakers of Russian. This is a book that you can read from cover to cover, which in my opinion makes its style a cut above many other grammar books.

This book is simply a classic, and will probably remain so for a long time.

When I first moved to Russia some nine years ago, I spoke just two words of Russian ("nyet" and "babushka"), and I spent quite some time examining various of the available "courses" to get my language skills up to the level needed to do business in Russia's unusual entrepreneurial climate.

But after many disappointments and much struggle, it was this comprehensive and ultra-clearly written grammar text that finally helped me to make sense of the language. Combining engaging, easily varied exercises with no-nonsense explications of even the most challenging of the language's grammatical concepts, Pulkina's fine text is quite rightly an undisputed classic in the pedagogical field. And unlike most Russian textbooks, which are limited in scope and designed as equivalents to a one or two-semester university course, this text brings together everything one could ever need to know about Russian grammar in a single volume of entirely manageable size.

Perhaps the most instructive testimonial one give this fine work is this: it single-handedly helped me -- a 50-year-old partially dyslexic, just barely high-school graduate who had never previously studied a foreign language in his life -- to master a very difficult language in the shortest of time periods. Moreover, this mastery was to such an extent that I was able to thrive in a cutthroat foreign business atmosphere by day while successfully wooing some of the world's most beautiful women by night.

Circumstances may have conspired to compel me to leave Russia some nine months ago, but thanks to Pulkina's marvelous text, the glorious Russian language shall remain with me always.

This is the best book to master Russian! I got this book when I was student of the Maritime School of Odessa (Ucraine) 13 years ago! The book is not for beginners, you must have a certain level of Russian to learn with it. After you reach this certain level, you will notice that you can learn more quickly and efficient with Pulkina's book! The book contains detailled grammar explanations and many excersises. The book explain the structure of the russian sentence and the relation between words and prepositions. The excersises will help you to assimilate the different grammatical rules and a way that you will not be frustated. Many tables explain the exceptions in the russian language.
The book is highly recommended for all people which know the basics of Russian!

Virgilio Krumbacher