Customer Reviews

Learn Russian Now! 9.0

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

 

 

I approached the russian language under two very different methods: this ultra modern CD-ROM and the old fashioned printed course, a.k.a. book. I am sorry to say that the Learn Russian Now! CD ROM, although impressive and nice, is not definitely the ideal tool for beginners. Someone will probably enjoy this CDROM if he is nearly an expert in russian language and wants to practice conversation and hearing skills. For the beginner, it can be frightening. Open the course and the first suggested section will take you to an intimidating 4 minute dialogue in russian which is supposed to be your first lesson using basic russian structures... basic for whom? Then, you are supposed to review what you just saw. Nice. Lessons are organized thematically (restaurants, how to catch a cab, around Saint Petesburg, etc.) and not by level of difficulty or expertise, so each one of them combines every imaginable verb tense (present, past, future, etc.) and language structure. This means lenghty monologues with incomprehensible russian chatter until your jaw drops or you turn off the computer. I simply could not learn russian using this method, only memorize some useful phrases, but that does NOT mean you are learning the languague.

Then I swtiched to the printed, step-by-step, old fashoned book (New Penguin Russian course VERY recommended!) and I'm glad I did. After dedicating one hour every other day to study my book, I am speaking russian after two months... and practicing online with russian friends :)

A good thing about this program is that it introduces you to the alphabet, pronouncing the letter sounds and the letter names themselves. Too bad they don't have that feature for numbers or counting. For that, you'd have to look them up or happen upon each number during dialog lessons.
I wouldn't completely rely on the 'Advanced Speech Analysis' feature in helping with one's accent, which basically has an arrow which points to one of three areas depending on one's accent ability: Keep Practicing, Good, and WOW. Though, it still is nice that I can play my voice back to back to back with the native speaker, determining how I need to improve myself. One doesn't need a meter for that.
The program will also allow one to type Russian characters and letters on a standard English keyboard. Nothing has to be reprogramed for it to type Russian.
The program also exercises listening comprehension along with the reading and writing. They have a dictation game, in which one will hear a Russian native speaker dictating sentences and the player will, in turn, type it in Russian.
The grammar tutorial is also very nice, giving you lessons in conjugation, etc., as well as a short but interesting history of the Russian language itself.
They have these dialogs for several situations that gives you examples of how words are used. They give you over ten-thousand words, all right. They're not made up into vocabulary lists, however. Instead it's made up of every single word for every single sentence in every single piece of dialog in the dialog sections.
Also included is a multilingual word processor, so one can type in their new language outside of the "Russian Now" program.
The only thing I don't like (and is the reason I knocked off a star) is the fact that it is a bit difficult to navigate through. One could get lost without a way to get back to where they started.

The LanguageNOW! series happen to be very good. It greatly improves your listening and reading skills. Russian happens to be one of the hardest languages in the world. Even many Russians have a hard time with their language.

As for as Grammar goes, this software puts you on the right track. The only way to actually learn grammar is to buy a grammar book. I suggest Shaum's Outlines: Russian Grammar - it is probably the best!

This program deserves the 5-star rating for several reasons.
1) Has a grammar turtorial (something a lot of language software is lacking)
2) Uses technology to its fullest with video, amazing audio(you can listen to over 10,000 words in Russian) , and voice recognition to help correct your pronunciation.
3) Good conversation practices
4) Extra learning material offered online
5)Uses native speakers

Overall, this program is a very impressive learning system unlike any other out there and I highly recomend it.

I have found the Russian Now program to be an excellent resource for learning Russian. It is especially useful when used in conjunction with other resources. I have found it most useful to use this program as my main resource and use two or three other publications as reinforcement.

For the complete beginner, it is an excellent resource for learning the Russian alphabet and pronunciation. The program gives you an opportunity to listen to either individual words or complete sentences from a selected title. After that, you can record your pronunciation and analyze your speech against a native speaker. There are also several different word games with varying levels of difficulty that accompany each title. You can use whatever features of the program that best suit you.

There are also grammar resources, but they are not that intuitive. They are about the equivalent of reading a text book on the subject.

The largest drawback to the program is the lack of truly beginner titles. This is probably the reason that I see the need for reinforcing material. Overall, though, it is an excellent program and definitely worth the price that is charged for it.

Not terribly expensive, but still not worth it. The Rosetta Stone software is far superior, albeit costly. If you're on a budget and MUST have software and are willing to put up with a klunky interface and poor quality, buy this. Otherwise, save your money.

Good program overall, I have no complaints at all. I really like how the program is set up and the games are fantastic practice. Videos are real good and when paired with the audio, they offer unparalled realism. The audio is extremely well done due to the fact that you can hear every word in the program said to you by a native Russian speaker. You can also have the program match your pronunciation to the native speaker's for comparison. You truely can not go wrong with this program.

I just bought this product and don't like it very much. I have browsed through it and found that it was very difficult to navigate my way around the program. There are some good areas in the program, but they are not separated from all the other things.
One of the first things the program asks you to do is listen to a conversation and take note of things that are said and that you hear. The conversation runs in segments and you can stop and play back words or phrases, etc. But the bad part to these conversations is that in the alphabet section, which isn't very easy to find since it's off in some other section of the program and not in the main area, the letters are ONLY capitals, it doesn't show lower cased letters, and in the conversations the words and letters are by far much different than that of the alphabet.
Then you have the problem of learning the grammer of Russian. Most of us are beginners, right? Well, to learn a language well we need to know the grammer and punctuation usage of the language. In this program, it isn't very clear where to read about the grammer, plus the grammer is in a nice compex form, as opposed to a much more favored, easy to read form.
Basicly, from what I have seen through my use of the program, you would be better of getting a different program, maybe even a book that teaches, such as The New Penguin Russian Course, which is far cheaper than this program, plus its mobile for people who don't have this program on a lap top.

This program is more of that for expirienced people learning Russian, not for beginners such as myself. But, this is all in my opinion, you might see differently.

This is a great program. Previously I bought another Russian language software program and it was pitiful compared with this one. Anywhere in this program you can right-click on a Russian word and bring up its grammar characteristics. An example might be (noun, feminine, 1st conjugation, possesive case). This is important to know when you are learning what ending a word needs based on that information. You can also hear words pronounced by Russian speakers at full speed or half speed and have the word repeated as many times as needed to imitate it. The only things this program lacks are a dictionary (you can download a free Russian/English, English/Russian dictionary off the internet from Russlang) and a "back" button to go to a previous training sentence. You can tell the program to go to a specific sentence and word (i.e. sentence #202, word #5), but without a printed-out sheet of all sentences how are you to know what sentence #202 says? Even so this is an amazing product and a great deal of work obviously went into developing it and it shows. One piece of advise though. You should also buy a good Russian language textbook to complement this program. Either one without the other will eventually leave you confused somewhere down the line. Just be aware that Russian is a complex language and the more reference tools you have at you side, the easier it will be. I have 3 books and often must read the same topic in all 3 to fully understand it. I give this product 2 thumbs up. If your local library has the book/tape series "Modern Russian 1" printed by the Georgetown University Press. I highly recommend you check out the book for a few weeks. It is a great reference tool. ...

I find this system too confusing for me. The explanations of the cases are too mind boggling for me to understand what it is that they are talking about. The voice part of the software is nice, however, it's definitely unreliable when it comes to telling you how well you are at pronouncing a word. I should know; just for fun, I said a word in english and it gave me a WOW for my "russian" pronunciation. What a joke! The movie "The Adventures of John Stevenson," although incredibly entertaining and fun to watch, didn't do a thing when it came to teaching me the language. I'm more of a visual learner and I prefer to be taught a language through pictures. This system just didn't help me at all.