Rating: 
Summary: Learn Russian easily
Review: This is a program that will help you learn Russian through games. It's purpose is to teach you mainly through listening. The purpose is not to teach you how to read or write or even put together full sentences. CD 2 is definitely great if you want to improve your listening but have nothing to listen to. The CD is all in Russian and teaches you to get used to it. The first Cd is fun because you can play their games or even make up your own using the games they give you. Before spending 100s of dollars on grammar books and such, pay ... for this program. If you cannot grasp this simple vocab - maybe Russian is not for you.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Bad for the Price
Review: This is a two cd rom set. The first one gently takes you through some beginning exercises that are fun and teach you some VERY VERY limited vocabulary that might be useful if, say, you're on a guided tour of Russia with some one else to handle the language for you, and you just want to be able to say a couple of very basic things. (Especially number practice is very well done) So far, so good. But then when you switch to the 2nd CDrom.. all of a sudden EVERYTHING is in Russian including the game instructions, verbal and written cues plus you're required to do some comparatively sophisticated manipulation of language in the games themselves--skills that the first CDrom did nothing to teach! It's sort of like being moved from first week, Level 1 Russian straight to a 2nd year college class. This produces a lot of frustration. To be effective there should be 4 more carefully stepped CDroms inserted between the 2.
Rating:
Summary: Not Bad for the Price
Review: This is a two cd rom set. The first one gently takes you through some beginning exercises that are fun and teach you some VERY VERY limited vocabulary that might be useful if, say, you're on a guided tour of Russia with some one else to handle the language for you, and you just want to be able to say a couple of very basic things. (Especially number practice is very well done) So far, so good. But then when you switch to the 2nd CDrom.. all of a sudden EVERYTHING is in Russian including the game instructions, verbal and written cues plus you're required to do some comparatively sophisticated manipulation of language in the games themselves--skills that the first CDrom did nothing to teach! It's sort of like being moved from first week, Level 1 Russian straight to a 2nd year college class. This produces a lot of frustration. To be effective there should be 4 more carefully stepped CDroms inserted between the 2.
Rating:
Summary: Good Starter for willing students.
Review: This is a very good program for people who are just starting to learn the Russian language. This program gives students a few basic words and phrases that will help a student get introduced to the language. It is worth the money in my opinion however the program is geared toward a younger age group and does not go very deep into the Russian language. Overall, this program would be a good way to start.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent starter course but see comments below
Review: This is an excellent starter course in Russian. There are dozens of multimedia and interactive lessons in just the two CD's, enough probably to fill a one-semester introductory course. The coolest aspect of the course is the digital speech-recognition feature which allows you to improve your pronunciation by comparison with the native speaker's. I also like the way you can highlight words you don't know with your mouse and pop up the definition of the word, or go right to the included dictionary for more information. This is very convenient and handy when doing the exercises if you can't recall the meaning of a word, and is a lot faster than looking it up manually in a book dictionary. However, for the serious student, I'd recommend spending the extra money and getting the 5-CD Beginner to Intermediate course or the 8-CD Deluxe course. I've previously used the 8-CD edition of the Spanish course, and it's a fine program. Since I was already familiar with the Instant Immersion approach from that, I thought I would try the same one for Russian. Since you'll have to buy the complete course anyway if you want to progress beyond the level where this course leaves off, I would just buy it right from the start. In the Deluxe edition, four of the eight CDs are devoted to the computer-based learning portion, which contain about 60 activities and exercises per CD on the four CD's, so that's about 240 total. That's a lot of material and it took me several months to go through it on the Spanish course. The other four CD's are audio-based only and contain further material on grammar, speaking exercises and dialog, and so on. Overall, this is a good little starter program, but it leaves off at the beginner level, as I said. For the more serious student I recommend getting either of the other two editions, which will take you from the beginner to intermediate level. After that, there is an Advanced Instant Immersion course you can get to continue progressing from there.
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