Customer Reviews

Schaum's Outline of Russian Grammar, Second Edition (Schaum's Outline Series)

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

 

 

I've modified my original review. See my additional comment below on how cyrillic displays on a Kindle vs. iPad. Not sure I'd buy this book for a small 6" Kindle display. Looks pretty good on an iPad.

I'll divide my review into the book's content and how it displays on an iPad. As background, I've been studying Russian since March, 2008 (mostly self-taught, but have had some private lessons with native speakers). I don't own a Kindle; though have read a small sample of Russian text on a second-generation Kindle that I borrowed. I do own an iPad.

BOOK'S CONTENT

I originally bought the paperback version of this book based on one of my instructor's recommendations. I have about 10 different textbooks, phrasebooks, and a variety of handheld and Mac software for learning Russian. It's hard to find one book that contains everything without being too heavy to lug around in a backpack. The Schaum's Outline is very comprehensive and in some sections, provides details that I had not read in other textbooks.

The chapters are broken up into:
1. Sounds of Russian
2. Nouns
3. Prepositions
4. Pronouns
5. Adjectives and adverbs
6. Numbers, dates, time
7. Verbs
8. Conjunctions

There's a lot of grammar detail in each chapter. Beginners may find it a bit too heavy on grammar terminology (e.g., "pretonic syllable", "partitive genitive", etc.), although the author has done a good job briefly defining each of these grammar terms. Intermediate and advanced learners will find this book a nice addition to their library since some of the grammar details in the Schaum's Outline are not found in your typical college-based textbooks (e.g., Golosa, Troika). Each chapter is divided into numerous sections, which explain the grammar in detail. Then each chapter section is followed by one to two exercises. By far, the MAIN advantage of this book for self-learners like me is that the answers to the exercises appear at the end of the book. Thank you, authors. If you're looking for lots of exercises for a single topic, you may be a bit disappointed. But in my opinion, all the comprehensive grammar content more than makes up for small number of exercises on a single topic. The book has a total of 239 exercises. Another big advantage is that each Russian word is accented to show stress. This is key to pronouncing a word correctly. I'd say that declension tables are the only thing missing in this book. Such tables are commonly found in a college-level textbook. For those of us who are visual learners, declension tables help the reader visualize patterns in the word endings. Unfortunately, Schaum's Outline doesn't have a complete set of declension tables.

VIEWING ON AN iPAD

After buying my iPad the day they came out, I was a bit disappointed in the number of books available at the iTunes Bookstore. Fortunately, Amazon's Kindle software is available for free for both iPad and Mac. I won't go into the pros and cons of reading on an iPad vs. Kindle, since you can find numerous such reviews elsewhere online. Instead, I'd like to focus on how the Schaum's Outline displays Cyrillic on the iPad.

I was reluctant to buy the Kindle version of ANY Russian language book because of some of the things I'd read online about how Kindles, in general, poorly display non-western characters. Some of the old information online suggests that viewing Cyrillic on a Kindle could only be done by hacking your Kindle. These hacks sometimes made the Kindle unstable.

The good news is that whatever drawbacks the Kindle had in the past with displaying Cyrillic have been improved, especially when viewed on an iPad. About 2 years ago, I'd seen some Cyrillic on my sister-in-law's, non-hacked, second-generation Kindle, and the Cyrillic looked quite jagged. It was the main reason I didn't buy a Kindle in the first place, since my main goal was to have a handheld that I could use to study Russian.

One way that Schaum's has gotten around the problem of poorly displaying Cyrillic is to display a lot of the Cyrillic text as graphic elements (small pictures) rather than sizable text. Since the iPad displays graphics so crisply, the use of this huge number of graphic elements within a sentence or to replace a table, is not too problematic. I have not viewed this e-book on a Kindle, so cannot comment on how that device displays the book.

NEGATIVES ABOUT HOW BOOK DISPLAYS ON IPAD

1. Graphics (small pictures) replace much of the Cyrillic text in this book. Since these are graphic elements, they cannot be searched, nor can they be expanded in size using the Kindle software's text-sizing option.
2. In places where Cyrillic is displayed as sizeable text, the size of the text is variable, even within the same word. So you get something that looks LiKe THis, WhiCH I FiNd a BIt AnNOying. (I tried typing an example in Cyrillic in this review, but Amazon doesn't display Cyrillic characters in these review submission boxes).
3. In some places, the Cyrillic looks like it's in superscript size compared to the English text beside it.
4. None of these negatives has been a deal-breaker for me, but some readers might find them a bit frustrating.


SUMMARY
1. Pros - very comprehensive content, 239 exercises with answers in the back, accents appear on all the Cyrillic to show where stress falls. To date, probably the only comprehensive Russian language textbook available on Kindle/iPad. This e-book is not yet available at the iTunes store.
2. Cons - Cyrillic displays very well on an iPad (my guess is better than on a Kindle), but a lot of the Cyrillic text is not searchable or sizeable. In some places, the Cyrillic is in a mix of capitalized and uncapitalized letters. Missing summary tables of all the declensions.
3. Not perfect, but overall well done and worth the purchase (Originally I gave this 4.5 stars, but downgraded it to 3.5 after seeing how poorly this ebook displayed cyrillic exercises on a 6" Kindle 3G. See comment below.

It was refreshing to find a book that honestly covered grammar without leaving out aspects until later. For this reason, it would probably be best to use this as a supplement for extra work outside of class or a more programmatic textbook, but if you already have learned a second language, especially one that uses a case structure, this will be very helpful (more so than the textbook/workbooks I have used). If you use this for extra practice, you will make substantial progress.

Came in good time, and in good condition. Nothing much else to say about this product. Content is good for beginning Russian speakers and is also good for intermediate speakers looking to review.