Customer Reviews

Russian Vocabulary Cards: Academic Study Card Set

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is a set of flash cards that roughly corresponds to the 1000 most commonly used words in the Russian language. They're great. They're the perfect size, small enough to carry a bunch comfortably in your pocket, but not so small that they're difficult to manipulate in your hand.

My suggestion would be to use these in conjunction with the Russian Learners Dictionary by Nicholas J. Brown. It lists 10,000 Russian words in order of frequency of use. Use the dictionary, sort through the cards and pick out the first 100, once you've learned those, move on to the next hundred. Once you run out of cards, you'll have to start making your own, but vis-ed makes blank cards too.

Part of me is actually dreading the day I move beyond my Russian textbook for beginners. That's because the more Russian I learn, the less likely I'll be to find the new vocab words in this excellent set of flashcards.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the box contains 1,000 cards, but many cards have multiple words or word combinations, so the total vocabulary contained therein is about 3,000 words. The cards are boxed in alphabetical order, and they're also numbered. Many of the cards identify the part of speech for the given word or words, and for Russian prepositions, the governing case(s) is/are also listed (infinitely helpful). Verbs are presented in aspectual pairs and are marked as either First Conjugation or Second Conjugation. Cards for irregular verbs show the conjugated forms for imperfective present/perfective future (first person singular, second person singular and third person plural) and past tenses as necessary.

In the nine months since I bought them, these cards have been invaluable. My textbook has a review after every five lessons, so I coordinate each new batch of flashcards with the unfamiliar words from the five lessons preceding each review. After 25 lessons, I can think of only a dozen or so words from the textbook that are not included in the set of flashcards. In addition, the cards fit perfectly in a pouch in my backpack, allowing me to brush up on my Russian anywhere I go. Vis-Ed also offers two other sets of Russian flashcards. If they're anything like the vocab cards, they're sure to be beneficial, because the vocab cards have been far and away my most effective Russian study aid. They have paid for themselves many times over. Now if I could just get Vis-Ed to make a set for intermediate/advanced students!

The vocabulary terms used here are basic ones, and there appear to be few if any technical terms. Although there are a thousand vocabulary words, many of them have multiple usages per card. For example, card 292 is kak (how, as), but also includes a listing of: kak budto (as if), kak-nibudt (somehow, sometime), and kak-tolko (as soon as).

A booklet is included with the set of one thousand vocabulary cards. This booklet includes hints for usage of the cards for maximum benefit, as well as a listing of all thousand cards. This listing makes it easy to keep track of lost or missing cards, or for one person to quiz another directly from the list. One can, of course, also make an enlarged photocopy of this list and to check off the words that one does not know.

The set of cards is very portable. All thousand cards fit into a 21 cm by 9.5 cm by 4 cm box. Each vocabulary card is 9 cm by 4 cm in size.

These cards are wonderful! Every day I would go over a couple, then tape them to the wall so I could glance at them regularly. By the time I was done, my walls were covered and I had improved my vocabulary tremendously. I heard just about everyone of these words repeatedly during my time in Russia. Just a really helpful product.

I had a hard time learning and remebering words. The cards helped me so much. They are the best cards becuase they give you the word not only in its nominative form but the other cases or uses as an adjective. If it was a verb it gave you perfective and imperfective. I think anyone who is learning russian or a teacher teaching russian should buy these cards. Good Luck Learning.

PROS: The vocabulary cards are extensive and useful. One of the best features is the card gives you the word in English, and ALL the translations based on cases which, if you study Russian, you know can be quite a pain.

CON: The cards are made with poor quality materials. At best, they remind me of badly printed business cards from a home printer. I wanted to be able to grab a handful and carry them with me in my pocket--glancing at them during "down" time throughout the day as an ongoing learning process. Unfortunately, the "cards" are so thin they become badly worn very quickly.

SUMMARY: The cards are worth the 15 dollars--just dont' expect a durable product to arrive.

Can I please express my frustration after reading the reviews of this product?

Why all the bitching and moaning about the "poor quality" of these flashcards? You get ONE THOUSAND flashcards for fifteen bucks, what do you expect?

These are a great tool for beginners (or or more advanced students, like me who want a refresher) who ARE LEARNING RUSSIAN FROM A TEACHER!!!! Do you expect to learn a language through FLASHCARDS? It is simply not possible. And for the people complaining that there is no pronunciation guide, get your lazy ass on Google or YouTube and figure it out! It is an extremely difficult language but the alphabet is easy to learn. Also, it is fairly easy to find audio clips of native speakers reciting the correct pronunciation of just about any word (Cyrillic is not always phonetic). And these flashcards are ABSOLUTELY in alphabetical order.

Whew. Ok, that's out of my system.

All-in-all:
-the cards are not top notch quality. Boo hoo.
-they are great for STUDENTS of Russian
-a great learning tool
-handy and portable (they give me something to do on the bus)
-I think fifteen bucks is a pretty slammin deal

I found these cards to be quite good. I would have preferred that they had been in order of frequency of usage rather than alphabetical. Having said that, they ARE the 1000 most common words. One small complaint is that the printing in the accompanying pamphlet was very faint and difficult to read. However when I phoned Vis-Ed, they immediately sent out a replacement. EXCELLENT customer service.

I love the pre-printed cards. They even tell you the grammar rules that apply to that particular word.

Small word cards with a Russian word on one side, and it's English translation on the other side. I select a card at random in the morning, say the word three times, and look at it several times during the day. It's wonderful way to enrich my language course.

This is a great product. I'd recommend vocabulary cards to anyone studying a foreign language.