Customer Reviews

Russian Speakers (Accent English)

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

 

 

I do not rate here quality of the exercises; I rate my dissatisfaction with the author's advertising scheme.
The author (or publisher) cleverly sells his creation under variety of names: for Russian speakers, for Chinese speakers etc. In fact, very little about this kit told me that it is customized for Russian speakers.
The introductory letter, book of examples, and mouth-shape pictures are the same for everyone. To "tailor" the product to Russians, they left out half of the sounds on the cassettes, leaving only 24 supposedly difficult for us.
There are no parallels between Russian and American sounds, no explanation of what is it that Russians do wrong with those sounds, even the word "Russian" is not mentioned anywhere except the front cover. Everywhere else it is "your language", so that the same kit can be sold to anyone.
Do not choose this product in hope that it is made specially for us, Russians.

this book is sold as an Accent training book that targets people who come from different backgrounds and have difference accents. However, there is no material in this book that focuses specifically on differences between Russian speech and American speech. Basically, the same book is being sold to Chinese, French, German etc. speakers. The only difference is the title of the book. Overall the book provides a good overview of typical American sounds but if you are looking for a book that focuses on your accent this is not the right book for you.

EXCELLENT Kit for Native Russian speakers to improve their pronunciation! I am a native Russian speaker and these tapes helped me greatly to improve my pronunciation. It would be unwise to expect some miracle transformation with the accent reduction by merely listening to the tapes. The main purpose of accent reduction is to help PROFICIENT English/RUSSIAN speakers speak with a more North American accent, and these tapes certainly delivery what is promised. To hire a private accent reduction coach may cost hundreds of dollars and sure it'll be more fun, but for those people like me, who are on a tight budget, these tapes are `lifesaver' :-)

I used it personally for some 6 months. Everybody's opinion in our office was that my pronunciation become more clear and less "forced"

In my company, I have to hold a lot of teleconferences -- after the pronunciation training, I do not hear anymore such annoying remarks as "what's that?" or "say it again?"

Strong points of course:

-- It specifically teaches Russian speakers to pronounce final consonants in a "hard" way

-- It specifically emphasizes pronunciation of sounds absent in Russian (like those represented by "th", for example)

-- It specifically focuses on differences between Russian and English ways of pronouncing seemingly the same sounds, like "t", for example

-- It gives a good introduction in the concept of long vs. short vowels (which is entirely different in Russian.

All together, I am pretty much satisfied with the course and will definitely recommend it to others.