Colloquial Russian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Routledge Colloquials (Cassettes Only))

Rating:
Summary: Disappointment
Review: This course really is a disappointment. The exercises are mostly translating paragraphs into English. They have vocabulary there, which is a plus. Conversations are in Russian with no English translations in the book. It's more of translating from Russian to English. I just wish there was more focus on grammar than just plain translating. How is a student supposed to learn the language when they're spending 80% of time just translating.

Rating:
Summary: THE BEST!
Review: This Russian Language book is by far the best beginner Russian book I have ever seen. I studied with this book in College and by the end of two semesters I had a wonderful base of Russian grammar and vocabulary. This book gave me such a great foundation I was sucessful with my studies and today I am in a PhD Russian program.

Rating:
Summary: Worst way to learn a foreign language!!!!
Review: We used this text for our Beginning Russian class in college and let me say that it's the worst text to use. The WHOLE CONVERSATIONS ARE IN RUSSIAN and EVEN THE WRITTEN TEXT IS IN RUSSIAN!!!.....There are no English translations and since Russian is a difficult language to learn you need the translations side by side with the Russian. By using this book it really discouraged me from continuing Russian! Quite a few students felt the same as I did about this text. This text states it's for beginners, but no way, it's far for the intermediate-advanced student or a student who has background in the language. If you are looking to learn Russian on your own try Pimsleur's Russian Quick & Easy or Pimsleur Russian: Basic. for audio only. Then once you've mastered that, then try Living Language Ultimate: Russian in order to learn the reading and writing. They provide translations for you (text only, not on tapes)

Rating:
Summary: Worst way to learn a foreign language!!!!
Review: We used this text for our Beginning Russian class in college and let me say that it's the worst text to use. The WHOLE CONVERSATIONS ARE IN RUSSIAN and EVEN THE WRITTEN TEXT IS IN RUSSIAN!!!.....There are no English translations and since Russian is a difficult language to learn you need the translations side by side with the Russian. By using this book it really discouraged me from continuing Russian! Quite a few students felt the same as I did about this text. This text states it's for beginners, but no way, it's far for the intermediate-advanced student or a student who has background in the language. If you are looking to learn Russian on your own try Pimsleur's Russian Quick & Easy or Pimsleur Russian: Basic. for audio only. Then once you've mastered that, then try Living Language Ultimate: Russian in order to learn the reading and writing. They provide translations for you (text only, not on tapes)