Customer Reviews

Russian Stage One: Live from Russia: Volume 1 (Russian in Stages)

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This is an excellent introductory textbook for Russian. The chapters are already organized in a very logical manner, from day to day activities that build on each other to the overall flow through a semester. This package includes a workbook, listening CD, and accompanying videos on DVD.

The hilariously awkward videos are almost worth the price tag for this book set. Seriously. They are way over-produced and one of the funniest things you'll probably ever see.

I used this book as part of a semester-long university language class and then again independently to further my progress through the equivalent of another semester. In either usage scenario, it has been the best foreign language textbook I have seen to date.

The combination of textbook, workbook, audio CD, and DVD, all of which are used together for almost every lesson in the book, helps to reinforce concepts and further reading, writing, and listening skills. In the course of each unit, a ~5 minute section of the video, which is a fictional story that follows several young people around their daily activities in Moscow, is shown several times, each with guiding exercises in the book to draw attention to particular phrases or events. The progression of increased understanding from the start to finish of each unit is very satisfying!

The book's organization into "Days", about 9 of them per Unit (with 6 Units total), helps to structure progress. It is also apparent that the authors put considerable thought into subtly repeating vocabulary and grammar concepts within 1-2 lessons after these were initially presented. This built-in repetition is helpful. The book always indicates the proper stressed syllable on words and uses a marking system to show how verb stems will change during their conjugation. There is a grammar analysis section at the end of every unit which gives a comprehensive summary through tables and textual explanations of the concepts that were presented in the course of that unit, which serves as a handy reference.

The only criticism I can think of is that the vocabulary dictionary at the end of the book does not contain every entry given in the list at the end of the units.

This is really the first book I have seen that is both comprehensive enough for university-level grammar courses while also offering enough activities and multimedia aids to allow for self-guided learning. Highly recommended!