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Recommended Russian audio course? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| clueless1 Newbie Canada Joined 4519 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes | Message 1 of 14 16 October 2014 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am wondering what course (or combined courses) would be recommended for beginner Russian. I am primarily
focused on conversational Russian. I am particularly interested in comparisons among the following: Modern Russian (Dawson) Assimil -- Russian Without Toil 1951 (re-recorded by Andrey Kuzmenko) vs Russian With Ease (2011) Linguaphone 1961 vs. Linguaphone 1989 Michel Thomas Princeton Specific questions are: 1. what would be best as a crash course (say 2 weeks before a trip)? E.g. I don't know much about FSI FAST course (or alternatives that may not be on the list above)? 2. And more importantly ... if one were to create a self study what 2 (or 3?) materials would be best combined? Any recommendation that is not on this list would be welcome. 3. Finally, any recommendation for vocab building (eg., any recommended anki deck of most frequent x- thousand words with audio? russian vocab software?) Thanks for advice in advance Edited by clueless1 on 16 October 2014 at 11:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3834 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes  Studies: German | Message 2 of 14 17 October 2014 at 12:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Please forgive my surprise but, do you really want to learn Russian in two weeks? In that case, I would recommend Linguaphone PDQ Russian. The Linguaphone PDQ courses present the absolute essential phrases that a short-term visitor might need in a foreign land (hotels, taxis, restaurants, etcetera). Do not expect any lengthy explanations about "why" something is said in a certain way, just parrot the phrases. I have played with their German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian courses. Given the deliberately limited scope and objectives, the PDQ courses are fairly-well constructed. They ARE limited, however. The only feature that I didn't appreciate was the voice-over of a cheery (I mean CHEERY!) individual telling me things that were in the accompanying book, as well as the musical introduction to the lesson units (I don't need this kind of encouragement or entertainment when learning a language ... it's a generational thing).
Of the material that you have listed, Modern Russian, by Dawson is by far the most thorough. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) was one of the sponors of this course and they used it rather than develop their own model. As you might be aware, the 50-plus hours of audio files are freely available at the Celtie. Although it was designed for classroom use, it is quite possible to work with this material on one's own. It would not be unreasonable to spend a good two years of self-study time on this course. Yes, yes, some of the vocabulary is out-dated. Big deal, the basic language has not changed that much! If you want to LEARN Russian and you can handle the mind-numbing drills, then THIS is the course! Oh, by the way, you MUST include the Instructor's Manual with this package. The "sound drills" that will help you with your pronunication are interspersed throughout the textbook. However, the transcripts to the sound drill exercises are included in the Instructor's Manual. Bizarre! The FSI Russian FAST course was created as a "stop-gap" measure to help U.S. diplomatic personnel prepare for a posting to Russia. It, too, was designed to be used in the classroom. However, there a no drills, the course is a tad "thin" and it is not as easy to use for self-study as the Modern Russian course by Dawson. If you really put your mind to it, you might cover it within a year, on your own. The "old" Linguaphone Russian course (I have a PDF/MP3 version) has a lot of information, but is NOT AT ALL easy to digest! Come to think of it, the "new" Linguaphone Russian Complete is not that easy, either! However, it is most definitely superior to its predessor. I find the Linguaphone courses a little pricey, so I always recommend buying the "refurbished" courses. However, at the end of the day, I still think that the Dawson text beats Linguaphone hands down. Thankfully, Saint-Michel did NOT record the Michel Thomas Russian himself. Thus, you'll only have to endure the mispronunciation and errors of the stumbling, bumbling, students. Then again, it's not a bad place to start for an inital (a TRULY initial) feel for the BASICs of the spoken language ... but it won't take you very far ... at all! The Assimil Russian With Ease is, justifiably, highly regarded. However, many beginners "stall" before the mid-point for a number of reasons. Frankly, while I am a huge fan of the Assimil method, I would take on their Russian course only after having developed a basic knowledge with some other method. You might wish to consider the U.C.L.A.-developed Beginner's Russian. The book is very inexpensive and this is a true multi-media course. The main course is on the website. As the authors point out, you won't be reading Tolstoy at the end of this course, but you will be comfortable with the basics. Give yourself six months to a year of self-study with this baby. You did not mention Pimsleur Russian, so I will. I have a love-hate relationship with the Pimsleur method. It could even be a maso-sado relationship! My advice for this course? Get a boot-leg copy after you have tried some other method and then, and ONLY then, play with this course. If you have more than two weeks and you want to learn just a little more than the basics, you could try the Routledge Colloquial Russian course. The scope is limited to teaching visitors how to cope with taxis, hotels, restaurants, small emergencies, etcetera. It is much more complete than the Linguaphone PDQ course, but not quite as complete as the FSI Russian FAST course. You'll need a good four months (or more) to digest this offering. Note carefully that the book and CDs are often sold separately; so, be sure you know what you're ordering. I am not at all familiar with the Princeton Russian course. TWO WEEKS, REALLY ???? Edited by Speakeasy on 17 October 2014 at 1:34am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6938 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 14 17 October 2014 at 2:42am | IP Logged | ||
For lack of other information I will assume that Russian will be your first foreign language and that you are planning to visit Russia for a couple of weeks rather than work or travel there for longer. If you're serious about starting to learn Russian with a crash course about 2 weeks before a trip but are just a regular stiff who hasn't bags of money or access to an intensive course meant for military or diplomatic personnel (and know only English), none of the courses that you suggested would do the job. They're meant to be worked on over a much longer period (anywhere from a few months to a year or two). If I were to stick to your tight schedule of T minus 2 weeks, I would start with this online course and try to finish at least the first seven lessons (avg. 2 days per lesson) and also get a phrasebook with audio such as this one and the course "Take off in Russian". You would get yourself familiar with some Russian for survival with the online course, and if you're really keen, you could also dip into the phrasebook and audio and/or even start the lessons in "Take off in Russian" simultaneously. Load the accompanying audio from the phrasebook and "Take off..." to your phone or MP3 player. Once you're travelling, I would use any downtime to work through "Take off..." (bring a small notebook and a pencil so that you can take notes and do the assigned exercises). Use the phrasebook and its audio as a supplement if you get bored or you need to say something that you can't figure out how to formulate from your studies to that point. The phrasebook and the book for "Take off in Russian" are small and should fit easily in your coat's (or cargo pants') pockets or your carry-on bag. "Take off in Russian" also has quite a lot of exercises and about two hours of audio in Russian (four CDs in total with the audio split about 50-50 between Russian and English. The English stuff is of someone giving instructions, preambles and short explanations of Russian grammar). Seemingly comparable courses in "Teach Yourself Russian" and "Colloquial Russian" have about the same ratio of Russian to English audio but its halved overall since those two courses each come with two CDs instead. You won't be conversational at all for such a short trip. You'd not only need to finish those courses (and then do more studying), but you'd need to hang around or do Skype with Russian native speakers for a while before going to Russia so that you can handle genuine conversation over there (using the local language properly to buy train tickets or ask for directions is not "conversational ability" in my view). It's one thing to express yourself understandably let alone in a fluently near-native way; it's another for you to understand natives asking for your opinion or about your background so that you can reply in kind or react appropriately. Once you've adjusted your expectations, I do think that you could have a lot of fun even if you're a shaky novice in the language since your learning won't be confined to the textbook and .mp3s. You'll be exposed to Russian everywhere once there anyway, and may be surprised at how well you can handle yourself in Russian by the end of the trip. If you start learning Russian long before you go, then you have a better chance of getting true conversational ability in the language. You have several options to do so and they will require varying amounts of time, discipline and money. I don't know what your learning style is but Speakeasy has given a useful and short description of the materials you've mentioned. I will add that "Princeton Russian" isn't a bad course and has a fair bit of colloquial material in its short dialogues. The biggest downside as I browse through it is that it doesn't have answer keys to the exercises so you'll need a native to check your answers and make sure that you're understanding things. I've found that the best way to build vocabulary is to expose myself to the language. Flashcards and the like don't work for me. When you think about it, we develop our stock of vocabulary passively (i.e. we see or hear a "new" word, figure out what it means, and if it's memorable enough and only under appropriate circumstances do we use that "new" word and thus let it become active). Read short comic strips on the web. Watch something in Russian with Russian subtitles if you can. Follow a short Russian song with the text in hand. Read signs. Read headlines. Look up unfamiliar words with a two-way dictionary. It's simple and short stuff but give yourself time to pick up vocabulary rather than studying long lists of words. Edited by Chung on 17 October 2014 at 2:45am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 4971 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 4 of 14 17 October 2014 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Beginner vocab building: I recommend this Memrise course of the first 543 words with audio. If you can complete that, there are other courses that go up to 1000 or 2000 words.
Combining that with Assimil (2011 or 1951) to get a good handle on pronunciation, and a more technical grammar-based course (Princeton SLA101 is an ok linear course if you can learn stuff without a lot of hand-holding), could be an effective three-pronged attack for someone with 2-3 months on their hands before exposure. RussianPod101 can also teach you quite a few basic phrases, if you can put up with how long it takes to listen to them waffle on. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| clueless1 Newbie Canada Joined 4519 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes | Message 5 of 14 17 October 2014 at 4:07am | IP Logged | ||
I thought I was pretty clear in asking for reccos for a two week crash course, and also reccos to actually learn the language -- implicit in the latter is a lot more time than two weeks. Really the two week question was just an afterthought, I'm not intellectually challenged. But given the replies above I guess I was not as clear as intended: I was thinking a year, though I'd hope to advance to a stage where I could at least try listening to more interesting stuff like podcasts much earlier, for any of the resources I listed. Thanks for your thorough reply. It was helpful, and I was not familiar with some of the resources you listed. How would you compare Dawson to UCLA to Assimil? Routledge sounded interesting; I'm curious what you would START with for highest yield. Also, if you were picking two (eg Dawson + Assimil, Dawson + pimsleur, ???) to begin with what would they be? Would you pick two or just go with a single course? Is assimil recent (with ease) preferred vs the new recording of without toil? Thanks again 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clueless1 Newbie Canada Joined 4519 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes | Message 6 of 14 17 October 2014 at 4:11am | IP Logged | ||
I cannot deal with the waffle. Its just too annoying. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4497 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 7 of 14 17 October 2014 at 5:10am | IP Logged | ||
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If you're looking for something good and fast, go with Michel Thomas. It's probably the best for your goal.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5347 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 8 of 14 17 October 2014 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you have only 2 weeks, get a phrase book with a CD.
Such as this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Collins-Gem-Russian-Phrasebook-Pack/ dp/0007247036 I doubt you will get most of that done in 2 weeks, but anything more will be wasting your time and money. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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