Teach Yourself Russian Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs) (TY: Complete Courses)
by Daphne West
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List Price: $26.95
Our Price: $14.93
Your Save: $ 12.02 ( 45% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 491.782421
EAN: 9780071431774
ISBN: 0071431772
Label: McGraw-Hill
Number Of Items: 1
Publication Date: 2004-04-21
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Studio: McGraw-Hill
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great language learning course
Comment: I love this book, it's very neatly organised, with great excersises. You'll learn everything necessary for daily survival (asking for directions, purchasing items, understanding signs and commercials), along with expressing abstract ideas and writing letters.
Customer Rating:
Summary: CD is okay, book can be thrown away
Comment: The cd is okay but the book is horrible if you are someone who has no experience with the Russian language.
Initially the book teaches you the Russian alphabet and then right after that it starts translating English words and phrases into Russian words (with no information as to how to pronounce the words).
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Good Introduction
Comment: I am using this text and its CDs to follow Pimsleur Conversational Russian. I used the 8 CD Pimsleur to jumpstart my vocabulary and pronunciation. Now I am working on my understanding of grammar and expanding my vocabulary using this Teach Yourself Russian.
This is a good introductory text that fits a slower effort than you would make at university. Those of us who have a life --as opposed to those busy defining one-- have to fit language into the interstices. Teach Yourself is good for that. Here is my weekly schedule:
Mon - Read the whole lesson, working out the basic pronunciation of the dialog and conversation bits. I don't even look at the exercises for this.
Tue, Wed, Thu - 1/3 of the exercises each day and listen to the lesson on CD. I listen at least three times and speak along with a lot of it.
Fri - Review two previous lessons. I listen to the two lessons' audio three times and then relax and read through the lessons in the text.
Sat, Sun - I don't make myself do anything but I often read the next week's dialogs or even the whole lesson because I can't wait for Monday.
For those used to cramming languages into their heads at school, this may seem too laid back But you would be surprised how much you learn this way. One other thing I do is always listen to my curiosity. When I start wondering about some particular grammar point, I study it a bit more. The same goes for vocabulary and so forth. Making some progress everyday and feeding your instinctual hunger for detail will get you some fluency in the end.
-----[later]
I'm on Lesson 13 now and I thought I'd add something about the hard part. Once you get used to Russian, you discover that the only really hard thing is all the noun endings. Every one of the six cases has different ending for nouns according to gender, of which there are three, each of which has three to four subgroups. Do the math. Nightmare.
Here's how I keep from letting it stop me. I make sure I learn everything else: the exercises, the dialogs, the reading. I understand those. Then -- when I feel like it -- I study an ending. I make up an exercise for it and practice using it with all those nouns. Then I go back to the lessons. This way, I will get there -- even if I get there slowly. Just a thought.
-----[still later]
I should add that you will need a Russian dictionary for this book. The little one at the end of the book isn't adequate. I recommend Romanov's Russian / English Dictionary -- it's cheap and handy. You can get a better one if you need to -- but that will be a while, right?
-----[later again]
I'm on Lesson 18 now. A few weeks ago, I had to make more time for other things which meant less time for these lessons. I cut them from five days to three in this way:
Monday - translate dialog, read grammar notes, do 1/2 exercises, listen 3 times to dialog
Tuesday - translate conversation, do 1/2 exercises, listen 3 times to dialog and conversation
Wednesday - translate reading, do conversation and reading exercises, listen 3 times to entire lesson
This seems to work just fine and in two weeks I'll be done with my first pass through this book.
----[and finally]
I finished my first pass through this book yesterday (31/12/08). Having done this book once and the Conversational Pimsleur 5 times since starting Russian from scratch 6 months ago, I can read a surprising amount of Russian and speak in a rudimentary fashion. I am far from even an uneducated native schoolchild's grasp of all the case endings. But then I'm far from done. I still have Teach Yourself Russian Conversation (3CDs + Guide) and Russian in Exercises to go for my FIRST year. And I figure at this rate I'll be fluent --not like a college grad in Russia but like a plain working-stiff Russian-- in four years. That's about how fast I learned English as a baby.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Russian language course
Comment: This course is a little too time-consuming for the casual traveler who wants to just learn some easy basics. I think it's a very good course for someone who has a few months to go through it and is going to spend some time in Russia. It shows the Russian spelling of the words and that is helpful. The course requires a bit of writing in the language and while it's good to learn to write it, it's probably not necessary for the short-time tourist. If you have the time, and enjoy digging into a new language, this is a good course to use. Otherwise, I'd go for "Teach Yourself Instant Russian".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Average compared to other 'Teach Yourself' language books
Comment: I have used other language books from the Teach Yourself lable and found them to be excelent value. But the Russian book had several flaws that I found really annoying.
Firstly the word lists are often incomplete, both after the dialogues and in the mini dictionary at the end of the book. Secondly the excercises are fairly light which doesn't help with practicing the language. I often need to use a seperate dictionary to find the meanings of words.
Russian grammar is fairly complex with six cases for which all verbs and adjectives need to be inflected. I don't think this book did a very good job of drilling those rules.
The book does have many good points. It is thorough and will reap rewards with hard work. It would make a very good compliment to several other books, especially a grammar book such as Schaum's Russian Grammar.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great language learning course
Comment: I love this book, it's very neatly organised, with great excersises. You'll learn everything necessary for daily survival (asking for directions, purchasing items, understanding signs and commercials), along with expressing abstract ideas and writing letters.
Customer Rating:
Summary: CD is okay, book can be thrown away
Comment: The cd is okay but the book is horrible if you are someone who has no experience with the Russian language.
Initially the book teaches you the Russian alphabet and then right after that it starts translating English words and phrases into Russian words (with no information as to how to pronounce the words).
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Good Introduction
Comment: I am using this text and its CDs to follow Pimsleur Conversational Russian. I used the 8 CD Pimsleur to jumpstart my vocabulary and pronunciation. Now I am working on my understanding of grammar and expanding my vocabulary using this Teach Yourself Russian.
This is a good introductory text that fits a slower effort than you would make at university. Those of us who have a life --as opposed to those busy defining one-- have to fit language into the interstices. Teach Yourself is good for that. Here is my weekly schedule:
Mon - Read the whole lesson, working out the basic pronunciation of the dialog and conversation bits. I don't even look at the exercises for this.
Tue, Wed, Thu - 1/3 of the exercises each day and listen to the lesson on CD. I listen at least three times and speak along with a lot of it.
Fri - Review two previous lessons. I listen to the two lessons' audio three times and then relax and read through the lessons in the text.
Sat, Sun - I don't make myself do anything but I often read the next week's dialogs or even the whole lesson because I can't wait for Monday.
For those used to cramming languages into their heads at school, this may seem too laid back But you would be surprised how much you learn this way. One other thing I do is always listen to my curiosity. When I start wondering about some particular grammar point, I study it a bit more. The same goes for vocabulary and so forth. Making some progress everyday and feeding your instinctual hunger for detail will get you some fluency in the end.
-----[later]
I'm on Lesson 13 now and I thought I'd add something about the hard part. Once you get used to Russian, you discover that the only really hard thing is all the noun endings. Every one of the six cases has different ending for nouns according to gender, of which there are three, each of which has three to four subgroups. Do the math. Nightmare.
Here's how I keep from letting it stop me. I make sure I learn everything else: the exercises, the dialogs, the reading. I understand those. Then -- when I feel like it -- I study an ending. I make up an exercise for it and practice using it with all those nouns. Then I go back to the lessons. This way, I will get there -- even if I get there slowly. Just a thought.
-----[still later]
I should add that you will need a Russian dictionary for this book. The little one at the end of the book isn't adequate. I recommend Romanov's Russian / English Dictionary -- it's cheap and handy. You can get a better one if you need to -- but that will be a while, right?
-----[later again]
I'm on Lesson 18 now. A few weeks ago, I had to make more time for other things which meant less time for these lessons. I cut them from five days to three in this way:
Monday - translate dialog, read grammar notes, do 1/2 exercises, listen 3 times to dialog
Tuesday - translate conversation, do 1/2 exercises, listen 3 times to dialog and conversation
Wednesday - translate reading, do conversation and reading exercises, listen 3 times to entire lesson
This seems to work just fine and in two weeks I'll be done with my first pass through this book.
----[and finally]
I finished my first pass through this book yesterday (31/12/08). Having done this book once and the Conversational Pimsleur 5 times since starting Russian from scratch 6 months ago, I can read a surprising amount of Russian and speak in a rudimentary fashion. I am far from even an uneducated native schoolchild's grasp of all the case endings. But then I'm far from done. I still have Teach Yourself Russian Conversation (3CDs + Guide) and Russian in Exercises to go for my FIRST year. And I figure at this rate I'll be fluent --not like a college grad in Russia but like a plain working-stiff Russian-- in four years. That's about how fast I learned English as a baby.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Russian language course
Comment: This course is a little too time-consuming for the casual traveler who wants to just learn some easy basics. I think it's a very good course for someone who has a few months to go through it and is going to spend some time in Russia. It shows the Russian spelling of the words and that is helpful. The course requires a bit of writing in the language and while it's good to learn to write it, it's probably not necessary for the short-time tourist. If you have the time, and enjoy digging into a new language, this is a good course to use. Otherwise, I'd go for "Teach Yourself Instant Russian".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Average compared to other 'Teach Yourself' language books
Comment: I have used other language books from the Teach Yourself lable and found them to be excelent value. But the Russian book had several flaws that I found really annoying.
Firstly the word lists are often incomplete, both after the dialogues and in the mini dictionary at the end of the book. Secondly the excercises are fairly light which doesn't help with practicing the language. I often need to use a seperate dictionary to find the meanings of words.
Russian grammar is fairly complex with six cases for which all verbs and adjectives need to be inflected. I don't think this book did a very good job of drilling those rules.
The book does have many good points. It is thorough and will reap rewards with hard work. It would make a very good compliment to several other books, especially a grammar book such as Schaum's Russian Grammar.
You can use Teach Yourself Russian Complete Course to learn at your own pace or as a supplement to your classwork. This complete course utilizes the very latest learning methods in an enjoyable and user-friendly format. The new edition also features: - Engaging visual materials such as menus, photographs, signs, and tickets
- Two CD recordings allowing quick and easy access to individual lessons and exercises
- A clear, accessible new page design
- Strong, striking cover photography
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