Learn Russian: The Fast and Fun Way

Rating:
Summary: Not what it could be
Review: My Russian tutor (I am in Tbilisi, Georgia) and I chose this book, sight unseen, for my first Russian course. I am only a few pages from finishing it. The first half fully lives up to its promise. The dialogs are decent, the lessons are a little different and interesting, there are amusing illustrations and the vocabulary is useful. So far, so good.

However, the book takes a real nosedive after the first half, or maybe 60%. It's almost as if the author had quit and left the rest of the work to someone else, or maybe just got tired of working on something that most people won't finish. The author uses a lot of words from that point on that suggest he is an American teaching what he learned from some other Americans. Some of the vocabulary he uses in the second half, in what should be routine dialogs, are obscure synonyms or colloquialisms not at all commonly used by Russians. My tutor too often says "Nobody says it that way."

The dialogs themselves become quirky, at best, after the first half. There are typos and brainos that simply should not have been left in after a decent proofreading. The use of some words or phrases in some of the dialogs, without prior introduction or further explanation (other than in the direct translation, which is often something other than what was written in Russian) sometimes leaves you wondering "What the heck does THAT mean?"

This book isn't bad, and I will finish it in a few days, it just falls short of its promise. If you buy it without tapes, as I did, you should have a tutor or friend who can at least coach you on pronunciation and clear up some of the confusion, especially in the second half.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of fun!
Review: Personally, I am really enjoying this learning system so far. The tapes do move pretty fast, but with repetition they become easier to keep up with. The speed can also be beneficial since native speakers tend to talk fast anyway and this way you get used to hearing and speaking the language quickly. I like the workbook as well. It has easy to understand exercises that get progressively more difficult and handy pronunciations over the larger words. In my opinion, this is a good system.

Rating:
Summary: Less than stellar.
Review: The graphics used in the book are the same as the ones used in the awful "Russian in ten minutes a day" by Kristine Kershul. This is somewhat better, but not by much. Many of the words in the book don't have the stress, or accent displayed, so for those words it's sort of useless. You get the stress for the "spotlight" words which are phonetically transliterated (the stressed syllables are in capitals).

I purchased the book and cassette version used for cheap. In that context - it was worthwhile, but for not much more, the Oxford Press "Take off in Russian" by Nick Ukia was superior. If you're really serious about learning Russian, there is no substitute for the Penguin Russian course. It really is the benchmark by which all beginners texts are judged.

Rating:
Summary: Too advanced for beginners
Review: The pronouncation exercises in the audio cassettes move too fast for the beginning student of Russian. There is not enough time given for the student to pronounce the words and phrases after the speaker. Also, the authors evidently assume that by listening, one will learn. This may be true but, since the dialogue moved so quickly, even with the pauses provided, I found the entire study to be extremely frustrating and finally substituted it with another more satisfying method. I would not recommend this book and cassettes to beginners.