Comprehensive Russian Grammar Drills in Audio

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Cantab
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Comprehensive Russian Grammar Drills in Audio

Postby Cantab » Sun May 08, 2022 8:08 pm

Hi Everyone!

Does anyone know of a comprehensive drill-based Russian grammar resource that includes audio?

I used FSI Basic French with great success in the past but, as far as I am aware, there is no FSI Basic Russian. The best drills-based resource I have so far found for Russian is Russian in Exercises by Khavronia and Shirochenskaya, but there is no accompanying audio. If Russian in Exercises had audio for repetitive listening, it would be perfect. Any suggestions?

Many thanks.
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willcouchman
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Re: Comprehensive Russian Grammar Drills in Audio

Postby willcouchman » Mon May 09, 2022 12:53 pm

Modern Russian 1 and 2 by Clayton Dawson is an extremely comprehensive FSI-style Russian audio-lingual course (I can't remember how many hours of audio, but if I recall correctly it was about 50 hours!). It's a beast, but well regarded by those who love drills.

The audio is available freely on the University of Indiana CELT archive:

https://celt.indiana.edu/portal/Russian/b09.html

You can get the textbooks on Amazon reasonably cheaply.

Will
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Cantab
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Re: Comprehensive Russian Grammar Drills in Audio

Postby Cantab » Mon May 09, 2022 1:58 pm

willcouchman wrote:Modern Russian 1 and 2 by Clayton Dawson is an extremely comprehensive FSI-style Russian audio-lingual course (I can't remember how many hours of audio, but if I recall correctly it was about 50 hours!). It's a beast, but well regarded by those who love drills.

The audio is available freely on the University of Indiana CELT archive:

https://celt.indiana.edu/portal/Russian/b09.html

You can get the textbooks on Amazon reasonably cheaply.

Will


Great suggestion - thanks so much!
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ilmari
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Re: Comprehensive Russian Grammar Drills in Audio

Postby ilmari » Fri May 13, 2022 2:07 pm

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Cantab
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Re: Comprehensive Russian Grammar Drills in Audio

Postby Cantab » Mon May 16, 2022 1:37 pm

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themethod
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Re: Comprehensive Russian Grammar Drills in Audio

Postby themethod » Sat Apr 22, 2023 2:28 pm

The Cortina Russian course, unlike most of the other books in the series, is almost entirely grammar drill focused. It's not nearly as comprehensive as something like Modern Russian, but it's more accessible and easier to work through. This is especially true of the audios, which are a complete 30-ish minute audio file for each lesson, with no interruptions.

https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/language ... ml#Russian

The book and audio are free at the link above, though you can also get used copies of the book for ~$5 online.

A quick word on the audio:

- The 2018 audio is by far the clearest, but it only has a male speaker (if that matters to you) and I find his pronunciation to be... well, he sounds like a guy doing audio for a language course, rather than a normal Russian speaker reading sentences.

It's not bad, by any means, it just sounds so clear and neutral to the point of feeling almost unnatural.

- The 1971 audio is fine up until Lesson 12/13 and is a female speaker; in later lessons the sound becomes a bit distorted, which can make it difficult to hear the subtleties of the pronunciation of certain words/

- The original 1952 audio has several speakers, both male and female.

That is to say, the easiest way is just to use Lesson 1-11 from the 1971 recording and 12-21 from the 2018 recording, and you'll get both a (slightly more natural-sounding) female speaker and a (very clear) male speaker. Again, if that matters to you.

However, it might be worth giving some of the older audios a try, if you want to hear other voices and pronunciations.
Last edited by themethod on Sun Apr 23, 2023 3:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Arnaud
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Re: Comprehensive Russian Grammar Drills in Audio

Postby Arnaud » Sun Apr 23, 2023 4:38 am

The "A living russian grammar" books have an audio part that can be easily found with Google (if it's audio and if it's a book, it's an ....)
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