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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4256 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 9 of 23 29 December 2013 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I feel like when it comes to recommending Russian courses, everyone has so many favorite courses to recommend that it almost makes me wish I could learn the language twice, just to try and use them all. I'm a beginner still, but have found a lot of the courses mentioned quite useful in my studies so far. Here are a few additional ones that I think might be useful to put into your Russian toolbelt.
An Invitation to Russian by Margarita Madrigal - It's probably impossible to find a physical copy of this anymore, but it possible to track down pdf versions on certain shady corners of the internet. This course is notable because it divides its lessons up into the slowest baby steps you can possibly imagine. The first few lessons introduce you to the Cyrillic Alphabet a handful of letters at a time via words Transparent to English speakers, and then it turns into basically a slow moving grammar through usage rather than explanations type book. If you decide to start with audio-only courses like Pimsleur and Michel Thomas, using this book in conjunction with them will be a good way to get comfortable with the Cyrillic alphabet before moving into more normally paced textbook courses. Cortina Method Conversation Russian in 20 Lessons - Each lesson of this book contains an Assimil style bilingual text dialogue, and is followed by patterns drills, and in the back is a large reference grammar that corresponds to each lesson. I know a lot of people don't like pattern drills, but I have trouble learning grammar without them. I find that when you're a good chunk of the way through Assimil and you've got a lot of vocabulary under your belt, but are still a bit foggy on some of the smaller details and inflections, then at this point some nice pattern drills will do wonders at clarifying and cementing certain key grammatical concepts. Russian for Beginners by Charles Duff & Dmitri Makaroff - This is another grammar book, and since I haven't tried out all the Russian grammars out there I can't say how well it stacks up against others, but here are some of its interesting features. Firstly I've found all its explanations quite clear, I'm really bad with grammar terminology, so I like that it will often explain how a grammar point applies in English before demonstrating its use in Russian. Each lesson also contains a bilingual text for studying the grammar and vocab cover, these start out as dialogues, but later in the book it starts using lengthier native materials like Russian folk tales and excerpts from Russian literature. It's also split into two halves, the first half claiming to focus on the regular aspects of Russian grammar, and the second half is focused more on the irregular aspects of grammar (though it seems to address some unavoidable irregularities in the first half). It claims to teach a 4000 word vocabulary, but I haven't personally verified this. *All these are older courses, and might contain some outdated vocabulary. Edited by YnEoS on 29 December 2013 at 10:08pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4360 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 10 of 23 29 December 2013 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Русский язык для всех, edited by Костомаров. This is a soviet era course, for beginners.
It was used by the Pushkin Institute here in Greece back in the day, but now I don't know if they use it, or if it's even in print. I have a very positive review for it. It has very few English, and that in only one of the manuals, which is a great advantage. I like the way it's printed, and the drawings it has. It seems to cover a lot, because you end up reading actual poems and prose from real writers. There is also the time capsule factor, when you read all the old soviet names of towns etc. Still, a good russian course. I don't know anything about possible outdated language though. But it's not that old, so hopefully it's ok. It's the one I'm using for my russian. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Slogger Newbie United States Joined 5732 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Latin, French | Message 11 of 23 10 January 2014 at 4:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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Cristianoo, here's a recommendation for a very thorough grammar/translation course.
It's old fashioned, and sort of the antithesis to Assimil, written as a college textbook: _Introductory Russian Grammar_, by Stilman, Stilman, and Harkins, 2nd ed., 1972. PROS: * Very systematic and thorough coverage of forms and syntax, with many examples. * Copious drills, exercises, and translations graded in difficulty. * Frequent "Sentence Pattern" sections that consist of example sentences in Russian with English translation, suitable to use as exercises with key (rather like the "PRACTICE: УПРАЖНЕНИЯ" in _Beginning Russian_, by Duff and Makaroff, YnEoS, but the sentences are usually longer in this book). CONS: * The recordings, if you can find them, are expensive. I did not use them and have never heard them. * The pronunciation section is very thorough, but I think it is not easy to use; however, it sounds like you do not need it now. * The book was last updated in 1972, so there may be some old-fashioned phrasing, and there is frequent mention of Leningrad, the Soviet Union, etc. * Being a college text it is expensive at list price, and nowadays it seems to be a print-on-demand over-sized softcover book (from a textbook publisher). But I have seen used hardcover copies on ebay recently for as little as $2. * There is no answer key to the drills, exercises, and translations, but this is compensated for, if you need exercises with an answer key, by the Sentence Pattern sections mentioned above. The book takes a very old-fashioned approach, so if you don't like that sort of thing, don't bother with it as a primer. But if you want Russian grammar systematically presented with plenty of translated examples, it is very good. It would be a nice review after going through Assimil or other more conversational courses. A group of a half dozen people whom I know worked through it recently and learned to read Russian pretty well, using it. Writing and speaking was not the goal of the group, but the book was intended to help with that too, of course. Have you decided yet how you'll be studying? Renaissancemedi, Do you have the recordings for Русский язык для всех? I've seen a complete set to listen to online, if you are interested. Bobb328, I've looked at the _Advanced Russian_, and it seems very thorough and informative. Are the beginning and intermediate books presented the same way--dialog, notes, analysis, etc.? All, There are lots of good books suggested here. Thanks! I'd be interested in learning where to obtain the recordings for the 1970s Assimil course, if anyone can tell me. I have the book. Edited by Slogger on 10 January 2014 at 4:43am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4360 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 12 of 23 10 January 2014 at 8:37am | IP Logged | |||||
You are so thoughtful. Yes I do have them in the form of a tape (!) and I actually had to ask my parents for a tape player because I didn't have one :) I have seen a set online as well, audio and text, but the stuff online are a lot fewer than the real-life course. It has: a textbook a teacher's manual (the only one with English), very comprehensive indeed a workbook let's talk and read recorded supplement with exercise book an extra учебник that seems more advanced from the other, but can be followed by a diligent person The only problem with that course is that it wasn't meant to be studied without a teacher. That's why I almost switched into assimil, but then I thought of what a good course it is and decided to make the effort! Thank you for the offer, you are very kind. :) Edited by renaissancemedi on 10 January 2014 at 8:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4256 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 13 of 23 10 January 2014 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks so much for making this recommendation, I found myself a copy, and can say its easily the best russian grammar/practice book I've used so far, and I've switched over to using it as my main text along with Assimil. Its formatted really well, there's tons of practice, and I've also found the grammatical explanations to be the most useful that I've come across so far.
Correct, they use very similar methods. The advanced course was actually written first, and the introduction to the beginner course explains that it was an attempt to take the methods they employed for advanced learners and make them usable for complete beginners. There are a lot of pronunciation notes at first, but certain aspects of pronunciation they cover later tie into their grammar explanations, so its really useful to read through them. Edited by YnEoS on 10 January 2014 at 3:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7146 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 14 of 23 10 January 2014 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The publishers (Wiley) have put the audio to the Stilman, Stilman, Harkins "Introductory Russian Grammar", recommended by Slogger above, online for free download here:
http://bcs.wiley.com/he-bcs/Books?action=resource&bcsId=3048 &itemId=0471007382&resourceId=7422 I think I noted this on the forum once before, but am not sure. The book gets very strong reviews on Amazon, and with the audio now available for free, seems to be a pretty reasonable, and affordable, option for those who like this approach. Edited by daristani on 10 January 2014 at 7:57pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4054 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 15 of 23 10 January 2014 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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PIMSLEUR RUSSIAN
While I truly enjoyed the PIMSLEUR programmes for Spanish, German, Italian, and Dutch, my experience with Pimsleur Polish (a Slavic language very closely related to Russian, but without the Cyrillic alphabet) left me with the feeling that the Pimsleur method is not well-suited to languages that are somewhat distant from English. For example, since grammar must be intuited in Pimsleur, I found the Polish case system difficult to grasp, not to mention their choice of verbs (a Polish friend of mine found many of the dialogues strange). Also, numbers and telling time, which are subject to the case system and which are introduced at the Phase I level, were not at all obvious to me. So, while many people swear by Pimsleur Russian, I did not even try it. BEGINNER’S RUSSIAN: A BASIC RUSSIAN COURSE (Kudyma, Miller, Kagan) I purchased the second edition of this book, which was published in 2010 by Hippocrene. It is designed for both self-study and classroom use. The textbook is ‘okay’, but the real learning takes place with the online videos, audio files, and exercises. The reviews on Amazon.com range from 5 stars to 1 star. Personally, I would give it 4 stars, not because of the product itself, which is actually quite good, but because of my own learning style (I prefer the 1960’s era FSI style) . The UCLA offers the supporting website: http://www.russian.ucla.edu/beginnersrussian/ RUSSIAN STAGE ONE (Lekic, Davidson, Gor) Apparently well-received, although I haven’t tried it myself. At Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Russian-Stage-One-Russia-Stages/dp/075 7552013 Some accompanying websites: http://www.livefromrussia.org/stage1/ http://lss.wisc.edu/digital-learning-lab/564 http://www.studyblue.com/notes/b/russian-stage-one-live-from -russia-volume-1-textbook-second-edition-the-russian-america n-collaborative-series/11331/0 MODERN RUSSIAN, Volumes 1 and 2 The Foreign Service Institute was one of the co-sponsors of this 1960’s-era classic. Like the FSI Basic courses, the method is, unsurprisingly, drill-drill-drill and, when you’re finished with that, drill-drill-drill some more. Detractors comment that some of the vocabulary is out-of-date because it relates to the Soviet era. My comment would be “big deal”, the BASIC language has not changed all that much and nowhere else can you find the mind-numbing drills. As many of you know, the audio files are freely available on the University of Indiana’s (Recorded Materials Archive) website: http://www.iu.edu/~celtie/russian_b09.html DEFENSE LANGUAGE INSTITUTE ARCHIVED COURSES For those who would like to learn how to call fire support onto Russian tanks as well as other more prosaic linguistic tasks. Only a government language programme would use such massive amounts of paper; however, the audio files are quite extensive. As many of you know, some kind soul made them available from the Joint Language University archives: https://jlu.wbtrain.com/sumtotal/language/DLI%20basic%20cour ses/Russian/ SO-YOU-WANT-TO-LEARN-A-LANGUAGE More classics: https://sites.google.com/site/soyouwanttolearnalanguage/russ ian Edited by Speakeasy on 10 January 2014 at 7:29pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5058 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 16 of 23 10 January 2014 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I loved this definition of Polish! 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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