Books to teach yourself Russian?

[ksushis.livejournal.com]

Hi. I'm Russian, my boyfriend is American and I wanted to get him a decent book he can teach himself some Russian with. I know the book is not exactly ideal, but the other methods (classroom, tutors, etc) are not an option right now. Of course I can explain to him things her wouldn't understand from the book, but if should be a good book to start with.

I went to amazon.com and found lots of books and lots of reviews ranging from "this book was the best" to "this was useless" for the same product.  I was wondering if people here could help me choose a book by sharing their experiences.

I've found these books to be popular:

The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners - unfortunately this one doesn't have any CDs or tapes to listen to...

Teach Yourself Russian Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs)

Oxford Take Off in Russian: 4 CDs

This one people didn't like: Basic Russian: Learn to Speak and Understand Russian with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur)

Have anyone had experience with any of these books, or any other books when trying to teach themselves Russian?

Thanks a lot!

Comments

[melsmarsh.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed that Pimsleur wasn't liked as it is by far the best of all of the programs. If it weren't for Pimsleur, I wouldn't know any Russian at all. I've tried all of the ones you listed (except for Oxford) as well as using many, many other books too. Pimsleur only sucks if you are trying to read Russian as the program is designed to increase speaking and listening.

[ksushis.livejournal.com]

Pimsleur had reviews ranging from "amazing" to "not worth the money"... Those who didn't like it were complaining about the lack of material (saying that it only teaches you how to say a few phrases) and absence of written material... But it's great it worked for you! Were there any other books you used that were good?

[melsmarsh.livejournal.com]

No, the other materials I've tried were horrible and I've tried a lot of material both for this language and others. Pimsleur was the best.

If they said it was only teaching you a "few phrases", that means the reviewers did not complete many lessons. In 30 minutes I learned more Russian than was covered in the first two weeks of my Russian class. There is a 10 lesson version, and a 90 lesson version.

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

Same stuff here: I am Russian and my boyfriend is not. He ended up writing to a professor of Russian in Stanford asking which book can he recommend and buying that one. It is called "Live From Moscow: Russian Stage One" (http://www.amazon.com/Live-Moscow-Russian-Stage-One/dp/075750857X). He is almost done with it and we're quite happy with it.

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

I actually used this book in my first year Russian class. It was pretty good, though a little disorganized. It also requires having someone there to explain a lot of the stuff to you, so I wouldn't really recommend it for self-study, though it was fine in a classroom setting. If you're willing to practice stuff with him, then it should be alright. My main complaint was just that there wasn't a lot of opportunity to practice speaking.

[crimeanelf.livejournal.com]

Yes, true, I have to sit with him. But I'm not a language professor, nevertheless the native speaker plus this book is enough for a good starter class.

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

My class will never forget the black dress that Tanya wore in first year for the clothing chapter... it was horrendous and revealing, and her father just said "Otlichno!" with the sketchiest look i've ever seen lol.

[ksushis.livejournal.com]

well, that means the authors had a sense of humor at least :)))

[shariperkins.livejournal.com]

Pimsleur ís amazing for pronounciation and speaking. However you have to use it in combination with another book to get a good grounding in the rules of grammar, expand vocabulary, etc.

[pphi.livejournal.com]

Oxford: having had good experience with Take Off in Italian, I decided to give Take Off in Russian a try. But I was soon distracted by their apparent focus on English businessmen who have to learn what the Russian for 'business card' is.

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

The New Penguin book is fantastic! I really liked it, though at times it can be a little too straight forward (so you should help him out at those times). I definitely recommend it as it has a lot of different types of activities and translations/drills.

[iseekreality.livejournal.com]

Seconded.

[podshuboj.livejournal.com]

thirded...

[ksushis.livejournal.com]

Did you use anything else for listening to, since New Penguin doesn't have tapes/CDs that go with it?

[superslayer18.livejournal.com]

No, unfortunately. I'm from Miami, and Russian education isn't really a focus there (as opposed to the vast resources for Spanish and French and etc). I was trying to do Russian on my own before college with absolutely no resources other than what I could find for myself, and in terms of listening, all I had was music lol. I DO have the Russian I and II pimsleur tapes, but now I'm in my third year of formal russian study and realize that the tapes sound pretty unnatural. They're great for pronunciation, but they essentially take the same set of dialogs in English and try to translate them into every language the same way more or less, so what you're saying just sounds unnatural I felt like. They also kinda stress learning more or less useless vocabulary equally with very useful vocab, and give no explanation for grammar other than "this is the way it is". They also ONLY use the vy form as far as I can remember, which is good to an extent, but do you really sound normal if you never use the ty form? I'd only recommend Pimsleur tapes if you keep all these caveats in mind, and you have someone there to tell you "erm.. we don't use "koe-shto" that much.. use "shto-to" instead" etc.

Good luck to you and him!

[podshuboj.livejournal.com]

I started out with the New Penguin and Instant Immersion Russian (http://www.masterrussian.com/aa082802a.shtml). It wasn't bad for listening comprehension...it was a lot cheaper than something like Rosetta Stone.

The program at my university uses the Live from Moscow books. I think it is worth noting that the first book and workbook set aren't too bad but the others seem to lack a good bit of proofreading.

[cassandraclue.livejournal.com]

Most american universities use Начало (http://www.amazon.com/Nachalo-Student-Listening-Comprehension-Audio/dp/0072433930/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-4447442-9967846?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191890676&sr=8-2). The book is split into two semesters; Начало 1 (blue) and Начало 2 (red). it also comes with audio.

[ksushis.livejournal.com]

I was wondering more about the books you can use to study by yourself - some books can be great in classroom setting and not very useful if there's just the two of you - you and the book. I don't know if Начало is good for studying by yourself or not. I also know that some universities use the book Golosa (Голоса), but I don't know how good/bad it is for studying by yourself.

[desgraciado.livejournal.com]

Golosa is HORRIBLE!

[punkndisorderli.livejournal.com]

I used both of those books... Nachalo and Golosa (yay hurricane Katrina?), and if I had to pick one, i prefered Golosa.

[charlie-delta.livejournal.com]

I have the first one (The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners)... its been a great help with teaching me the written side of the language.

I combined this with a couple of phrase books and cd's to learn how to speak some of it.

I start a course in a weeks time but what i've learnt so far has been a great help..

[tectonic-drift.livejournal.com]

I have found "Russian for Beginners" by Duff to be quite useful.

[desgraciado.livejournal.com]

We've used Голоса and Начало both in class and neither is very useful. Голоса is unorganized and out-of-date; Начало is not very helpful to you unless you use a dictionary, 501 Russian Verbs, and Kemple's Essential Russian Grammar all as points of reference in addition to the actual text. I've bought Teach Yourself Russian and Teach Yourself Russian Grammar, but haven't gotten around to actually using them. What I briefly glanced of Teach Yourself Russian seemed to be more oriented for the business traveler, though.