Colloquial Ukrainian (Colloquial Series (Multimedia))

Rating:
Summary: OK, but not great
Review: I found that the cassettes and book started out slowly and well but then became extremely difficult around the 3rd and 4th chapters. For example, in the 3rd lesson on tape, the dialog was taped with a lot of background noise (realistic for the restaurant setting). This makes it very difficult for a beginner to understand the new words! The beginning spent a lot of time on phonemes and the alphabet- both very helpful.

Rating:
Summary: This manual gets you going quickly!
Review: Ukrainian as a second language for English speakers is especially difficult, because the student must learn a new phonetic system via a cyrillic alphabet. "Colloquial Ukrainian" starts with understanding the cyrillic phonex and teaches beginning grammar through common dialogue.

Great book to begin self-instruction of the language. It would be improved if the dictionary pages included more vocabulary.