Customer Reviews

Troika, Workbook and Laboratory Manual: A Communicative Approach to Russian Language, Life, and Culture

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

 

 

I ordered this to accompany the Pimsleur Language Russian program, as Pimsleur, although very powerful for learning to speak, has little more than a pamphlet to teach you to read. So, I picked this up, and it is very handy. It has made the process of learning to read fairly easay and enjoyable.

I would have rated this a 3, however, because you lose a LOT of the meat of the book if you don't have the audio recordings, which aren't included in the book. At least, they weren't with mine. However, I poked around online and found that they're available for download off this website:

http://mllc.utsa.edu/troika/student/mp3.htm

I don't know how long that site will be up, but if you intend to use this book to teach yourself to read and speak, those MP3s will be invaluable.

I have attempted to learn from this book in a first-level university Russian course. (I am a middle-aged retired teacher, and already have some background in 4 languages, with reasonable success in all of them.) I'm sure that there's some sort of pedagogical theory which justifies the book's structure, but I find it a constant barrier to my learning. Each chapter is structured in the same way. Each starts with a Russian-only treatment of the materials to be covered in the chapter. Of course, virtually all the material is new to the reader at that point. The Russian section has pointers, therefore, into the following grammatical section, which is in English, and is at the end of the chapter. Unfortunately, the presented material is not well linearized, so after having stopped in mid-stream to read those grammar sections, and having flipped back and forth for a while, one still hasn't encountered all of the vocabulary and concepts in the current section. A chapter makes sense only when one has completed it, meaning that the process of learning is constantly frustrating, and lacking in the pleasures and rewards of mastery along the way. I don't find it any better to use as a review aid when test time comes along. If your prof has selected the text, you're stuck with it; I'd suggest finding some supporting ancillary materials, and using them from day one. I have the luxury of dropping the class. I've found a "Russian as a Second Language" series published in Russia for English speakers, and will hire a native-speaker college student to help me work my way through it. (The title is from a Steely Dan song, by the way. I'm a big believer in aerial views in first-level courses.)

The order in which material is introduced is fine and the examples and explanations are good. However, except for the wonderful charts in the last two pages of the book, this book is about as poorly organized for finding anything as a book can be. If you have a photographic memory and never need to look anything up, this book is fabulous. But if you need to find something - the meaning of a word or a rule of grammar - plan on looking in three or four places. And don't count on finding the word your looking for in the glossary. For example, there in no mention in the glossary of the word "when." This isn't a bad book, but unfortunately it is frequently a frustrating one.

Troika is a complete disaster. NOWHERE will you find complete declensions of nouns, ie, all 6 cases. Table at book's back can fool you, because it cannot display exceptions, eg pisatel and ychitel are not the same endings. This is fatal, as individual chapters attempt to teach one case at a time, so one rarely practices constructing a useful sentence. Rebecca Domar's Basic Russian, pubd 1960 has it all, declensions of nouns & adjectives. Troika is designed to prolong the required coursework of students to become fluent. So dumbed down!
Schaums's outline has more for $15, and Dover's Essential Russian at $6.

I am using this book in my Russian 101 class right now. The book itself is well organized and the grammer rules are clearly presented, but this book is in desperate need of a set of(or at least one)CD's to practice pronunciation with. The lab audiocassettes that are available don't go over the exercises in the book, just the listening exercises in the workbook. If this book came with some audio materials, it would get five stars. It is great for someone who is just getting a start in Russian.

Ok, for all of those people who have ordered this book (both textbook and workbook), let me emphasize something: this book is meant to be used as an in-class book only. I have had Russian classes with Dr. Nummikoski for the past three years. The book it is primarily geared to be used in the classroom only. If you are in class every day and the professor knows how to utilize the book then the book is recommended, but if you just want to learn on your own, do not buy this book as you will need the audio files she has. The workbook is great too. There is no CD associated with the book and I can understand people's frustration about that. For those who want to teach themselves Russian try buying Rosetta Stone.

I found this book to be excellent for beginners, especially if you are looking to begin speaking and writing right away. I do not like the organization of the book with grammar in the back of each chapter and everything else up front. Also, some of the essays in the book can leave you a little lost and there are some slight errors in some of the text, but otherwise it's a great book to get a solid beginning base on the language, especially in a formal classroom setting. I would not reccommend using this on your own! I like the fact that you must finish each chapter because that way you will not be lost in the rest of the book. Also, the book repeats some verbs and vocabulary so you get the chance to re-inforce some of what you have learned. I have two native Russian speaking friends who live in Russia and both say they are impressed with what I learned after year.(I had finished the book.) If you master this book, along with the work book and tapes, the rest is just building on grammar and vocabulary. If you are determined to learn this difficult language, this book will give you a great base to set you on your way!

My university uses this book in first-year Russian. To be honest, I hated this book for the first several chapters/weeks. It takes a while to get used to the way it is arranged, because everything is presented in Russian first, then explained in English at the end. This is somewhat overwhelming for the beginner; however, if you aren't willing to plow on through, you probably won't be a very successful Russian speaker anyway. Anyone who expects a textbook to magically make learning Russian easy is probably in for an unpleasant surprise no matter what book they choose.

Once we got used to the format, however, this book works very well. Unfortunately there is no intermediate book to follow it up yet, so our university had us using a completely different textbook for second-year. After using the new textbook, which is not very good and way too expensive for a paperback, I realize how good Troika really was. There aren't a whole lot of Beginner Russian textbooks out there, so if you're looking into a new textbook for your class, take a look at this one.

I am a native Russian speaker and have helped teach college-level beginning Russian with this book's help. My major complaint is that food, clothing and body parts--essential basics for communication--are left out for the better part of the book. Otherwise, it's a satisfactory textbook, but I would not use it again.

I just completed the previous edition of this textbook, and I'd say it's a decent enough introduction for anyone who really wants to learn the Russian language. The material is presented in a well-structured and leisurely way. There's much to like about this book. However, as far as I'm concerned, this book contains at least 4 major weaknesses:

1. Russian cases are presented "a little too leisurely". For instance, inanimate accusative case isn't introduced until chapter 7; genitive case singular, not introduced till chapter 10; animate accusative, not until chap. 12; dative, not until chap. 13; genitive plural / animate accusative plural, not until chap. 15; and finally, the instrumental case has to wait till chapters 16 and 17 to be introduced.

2. The basic verbs of motion (so important in Russian) are covered only cursorily in chap. 12. As far as I can remember, there's no significant discussion of the prefixes added to the verbs meaning "to go" to modify them. Also, there's no special mention of the verbs "to fly", "to run", "to swim", etc.

3. Aside from a table in the appendix, there's no serious attempt to explain prepositions and how they relate to the Russian cases.

4. The treatment of time expressions (chap. 7) is severely lacking. The book lazily and sloppily assumes the student will always be asked the time on the hour and/or the half hour. Without going into details, nothing in the book suggest the importance of the genitive case in time expressions.

Still, I don't believe those "faults" completely disqualify this book. In fact, I'm hoping to give it a fresh once-over sometime soon. Currently, I'm using the foundation I acquired from it to diversify my learning experience through online learning tools as well as other books.