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Princeton’s Russian course | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6355 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 17 of 28 31 October 2010 at 2:53am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm beginning to study Russian at the same time as a friend of mine. He is an accomplished polyglot who's opinion I
respect. He chose the Princeton course as his beginner course. However, he found the course had too much focus on dialogues, not enough grammar, and he hated the layout. So he switched to assimil to get a basic grounding in grammar and basic vocab. He thinks he will go back to Princeton eventually, since it has really useful colloquial phrases. I, on the other hand, started with Pimsleur and Michel Thomas, but that's another story... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| хелдер Diglot Newbie Brazil aleph.helderdarocha.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4815 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English, Portuguese* Studies: Russian | Message 18 of 28 08 March 2011 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm studying it.
101 contains 102. 101 = Chapters 1 to 6 (lessons 1 to 50), Story 1 to 7. 102 = Chapters 7 to 12 (lessons 51 to 84), Story 8 to 21. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4516 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 19 of 28 04 May 2012 at 8:24am | IP Logged | ||
I too am planning to start with Pimsleur and Michel Thomas for Russian once they arrive. What was your outcome? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| хелдер Diglot Newbie Brazil aleph.helderdarocha.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4815 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English, Portuguese* Studies: Russian | Message 20 of 28 04 May 2012 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I studied the first Princeton year in 4 months (101/102), in parallel with LiveMocha.com, songs, writing letters and
watching movies. Then I went to Russia for three months. My vocabulary is still not great, but I can communicate most of the time, I can read news, notes, and sometimes I can understand people speaking. I did half of the Princeton second year when I returned from Russia, but I got a bit bored with the stories and dialogs, and decided to do something different. I got a Russian reader and translated some stories. Then I translated a Chekhov play and some fairy tales. It has been two months since I stopped. My Russian is a bit worse, but I intend to travel there again, so I will soon start reviewing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4476 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 28 05 May 2012 at 7:45am | IP Logged | ||
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There are good things and bad things about it. I used it for about 2 months and quit. I quit for the following reasons.
1) I didn't like dealing with all the pdf files, etc. Kind of messy. 2) I hated the phonetic script the author invented, and much of the pronunciation explanations. 3) Grammar wasn't sticking. This was at least partly my fault. I didn't write anything, usually didn't do the homework, and didn't spend much time analyzing my mistakes. 4) The program was really big, and information given in small pieces. Grammar is only so useful until you have a rough idea of how everything goes together. So you need to get through a whole program to get a good feel for all the individual aspects. This program is so big that it feels like I would take forever to get to the point where I could get my arms around the language. To give you an idea, I was spending about 1 hour on a lesson, And that's without doing homework or writing anything down. I did memorize new vocabulary in that time. But the reason I didn't write or do homework was to save time. So I was looking at a situation where I'd need 200 hours to complete a program that couldn't make the grammar stick. So I switched to Assimil. Used as recommended, it's not great with grammar either, but it's closer to 100 hours for what is probably about the same material. And that's with me adding in manual translation to make the grammar stick. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4861 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 22 of 28 05 May 2012 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Why? What don't you like? What transcription do you think is the best? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4476 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English* | Message 23 of 28 06 May 2012 at 7:52am | IP Logged | ||
It's been a while since I've worked with it, so I'll just give you an example of the pronunciation explanations I didn't like. 3 ways to spell "O". I don't doubt that by his system he's right, but he totally lost me more than once, which made me ignore it. Regarding transcription - I wish he'd just used phonetic cyrillic in parentheses. Anyway, over all it's a good free resource that most people like, so I suppose I'm being picky. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4861 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 24 of 28 06 May 2012 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
молокó - мълакó? Well, I wish you read the transcription in the New Penguin Russian Course together with all the phonetic explanatons, we discussed it Beginning Russian Advice? in Advice Center. Edited by Марк on 06 May 2012 at 12:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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