Questions about Russian Courses

[tarvos]

На вкус и цвет все фломастеры разные... а товарищей нет!

[Expugnator]

What about the course from the Princeton university? It's fairly extensive, has a lot of audio and is freely available.

[Xmmm]

Nonetheless, I support the oft-stated criticism of the Assimil method as to the weak explanations of grammar and, in addition, that the pace or learning-curve some of the individual courses can be breathtakingly steep. In my review, the latter comment applies to Assimil Russian and, for this reason, given the availability of so many other options for learning what-is-for-native-English-speakers a difficult language, I would not begin my studies with Assimil Russian . Rather, I would begin with some other very basic method and use Assimil as additional practice materials.


Well, everyone's different. The risk of starting with a "very basic method" (Duolingo comes to mind) is that halfway through the course all you can really say is "This is my duck", wanderlust kicks in, and then the Duolingo Klingon course becomes available and you realize Russian wasn't the language for you after all. That's a different kind of failure than giving up because something is too hard, but I'm not sure it's a better kind of failure.

The Assimil course is relatively entertaining and 30 minutes a day should be enough (if used as directed) to get a handle on the material. Maybe a few days you have to repeat a lesson so it sinks in. That's not so bad.

So I disagree it's too steep, although I do agree about the weak grammar. I will probably pick up the "New Penguin Russian" book for that ...

[tangleweeds]

Reading again the OP, I see that he prefers bilingual texts, so Ruslan and Teach Yourself (by Daphne West) are perhaps not the best books for him, as the texts are not translated: there are only vocabulary lists.

I can handle untranslated texts if there's a complete vocabulary list and decent grammar explanations. What makes me crazy is the phrase book style, where there's no breakdown of what particular words mean, or why their inflections are changing.

[Ed1991]

I have used both the Colloquial and The New Penguin course for Russian. I would recommend both as they provide a nice introduction to the language and the grammar if you make sure you work through the exercises.

The Princeton course is also worth taking a look at and can be downloaded for free. Though the pace of the course is rather slow in my opinion.

I would also recommend something like Русский язык в упражнениях. The old edition can be found with a simple Google and the book contains hundreds and hundreds of grammar exercises with a key at the back.

[Arnaud]

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[Ogrim]

I really liked Colloquial Russian - it is a method that fits my learning style. It can feel a bit heavy in the beginning, as you get a lot of new vocabulary in each lesson and you dive into complex grammar pretty quickly, but it has comprehensive wordlists for each lesson and the grammar explanations are good in my view.

I wouldn't bother about the audio that goes with it though. It does not have audio for all the texts, far from it, and a lot of it is an obnoxious voice giving you instructions in posh English about answering questions, repeating phrases and so on. For audio, Assimil is much better.

Another good course is Langenscheidt, but to use that you need to know German.

[peterbeischmidt]

I recently came across the textbook author Nina Potapova, who authored numerous Russian textbooks, such as: Fifty Lessons in Russian, Russian Elementary Course (two volumes) and Learning Russian (again two volumes). They have been translated into many different languages, among them French, Spanish, Portuguese and German, in addition to English.

Her "Russian Course for English Speaking People" also comes with audio recordings. On Worldcat I found a list of libraries that hold copies: http://www.worldcat.org/title/russian-c ... lc/4116252

The first person who manages to obtain a copy of the recordings will receive my personal "Obscure Language Material Digger of the Year" award.

Another good course is Langenscheidt, but to use that you need to know German.

It's a pleasure to see them being mentioned! Over the decades Langenscheidt has published an array of Russian courses. I recently bought the vinyl records for "30 Stunden Russisch" and "Praktisches Lehrbuch Russisch" on Ebay for the price of a pack of coffee. In my opinion they are on par with the old Linguaphone courses in terms of their quality.

For those who would like to know more, user Kronos posted a meticulously researched list of their self-teaching language manuals on HTLAL: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... 33214&PN=2

[tangleweeds]

Her "Russian Course for English Speaking People" also comes with audio recordings. On Worldcat I found a list of libraries that hold copies: http://www.worldcat.org/title/russian-c ... lc/4116252.

LP recordings! Must find a hipster to rip from vinyl for me...