Russian Language and People: A Course for Beginners Learning Russian

Rating:
Summary: You're on your own
Review: I found this course to be quite helpful in attempting to learn Russian with minimal assistance from a Russian tutor.

The lessons are real world oriented and of a length that allows the student to consume the language in reasonably sized bites.

I was able to get by in Russia and the Ukraine after studying for less than six months.

The best of the low priced language courses.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Best Language Courses I've ever seen
Review: This BBC course (which comes with cassettes) is extremely well thought out and supports you the whole way through. For example, instead of trying to teach you the whole cyrillic alphabet at one gulp, it spreads the unfamiliar squiggles over 4 lessons all the while moving you directly into the heart of Russian language and culture with each lesson. The exercises are imaginative and very useful; using lots of actual realia (train tickets, shop signs, play bills, menus, etc) that are fascinating on their own. You're even doing Russian Crossword puzzles by lesson 5!! The structure allows you to continually reuse the things you've learned in the previous lessons and concentrates on practical language necessities and situations while you're in Russia. I am a foreign language teacher myself, and needed to learn some Russian quickly. I found that this series gave me exactly the 'building blocks" with which to make myself understood and really enjoy my trip!