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Colloquial Russian: The Complete Course for Beginners (Colloquial Series)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Routledge (1997-08-14)
ISBN: 0415161401
EAN: 9780415161404
Dewy Decimal #: 491
Paperback: 288 pages
Edition: 2
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Customer Reviews
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Truly appalling
Rating  (1)
Date: 2007-10-27
4 out of 4 customers found this reveiw helpful
I hate this book with a vengeance and have very few nice things to say about it. However, let's see what measly positive points it does have:
1) it is crammed with information- not always correct and clear information, you see, but still there's a lot.
2) in some areas it provides clear explanations and examples
3) there are numerous exercises with answers included if you want to check your progress.
Everything else about this publication is simply horrendous!
* The presentation and order of grammar points is completely illogical and leaves the reader more confused than anything. For example, the author thought it made more sense to cover all the other cases before mentioning how to form the nominative plural; ridiculous!
* The vocabulary covered is on the whole highly irrelevant to real life situations, especially all the cr*p about "wanting to become a sportsman" and "Russian education system". Come on, who is this book written for!?
* There are spelling mistakes littered throughout the book and also several errors regarding usage of words (I've been told).
* The dictionary at the back of the book mysteriously does not contain certain words that appear in the dialogues and exercises.
* I would say the writers of Colloquial Russian have very high expectations of the general reader: the progress you're supposed to make in order to follow each chapter is ludicrous. Furthermore, the exercises which are apparently meant to follow on from the dialogues and texts are very difficult and repetitive.
So in summary, unless you have a native speaker by your side explaining every single thing, this book is full of pitfalls and will likely fail to assist you in your Russian studies. At worst you may even be put off learning Russian or perhaps tempted to throw the book (and hopefully not yourself!) into a fire or bottomless pit. In other words AVOID!!!
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A tough but rewarding introduction to studying Russian
Rating  (4)
Date: 2006-07-06
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
Before I bought this book I looked at several other introductory books on Russian. I chose this one because it is clear and concise, and packs a great deal of learning into each chapter. If you are sufficiently determined, in an astonishingly short time you should have a grounding in grammar and a vocabulary of about 1500 of the most commonly used words, and be able to read and write confidently in Russian about everyday subjects. It takes you up to intermediate level, which I think means to about GCSE level. The last few topics introduce current affairs vocabulary, and have an A-level feel to them.
I understand this is the book that Cambridge University recommend to complete beginners in Russian studies. Be warned then: you will need either a Russian tutor or the kind of motivation and self-discipline that you would expect from a Cambridge student. There is little space devoted to teaching you either pronunciation or Cyrillic writing. It is simply assumed that you have other ways to learn these (e.g. the optional extra CDs or cassettes). There are few opportunities to consolidate your understanding (e.g. revision exercises): you are expected to grasp every grammar point and learn every word the first time you encounter it. There is a good English-Russian, Russian-English vocabulary section at the back, but the grammar topics are poorly indexed. Expect this book to become dog-eared as you thumb through it searching for the page where the grammar point that you need but can't quite remember is explained.
If you want to learn simply a little conversational or tourist Russian then this book is not for you. Buy this book if you want to learn written Russian to intermediate level, and have access to a tutor or previous experience of learning a language on your own. Buy the accompanying CDs or cassettes if you feel rich, otherwise look for other sources of spoken Russian to help you learn pronunciation. You will probably need to buy a grammar reference book later in your studies which covers this material.
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this is not for beginners
Rating  (2)
Date: 2005-07-03
6 out of 7 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is not for beginners; you are thrown in the deep end by learning difficult phrases early on. Another problem was trying to match up the audio exercises with the exercises in the book. I think they have made the audio execises different from the book so you have no way of checking the spoken word against the written word.
There is no build up with learning russian, ie. getting to grips with the alphabet, learning very small sentences and simple tenses, etc. Please do not buy this book if you want to learn russian from scratch.
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A decent russian book
Rating (4)
Date: 2004-09-23
5 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I take private Russian lessons, and this is the book I use. It is ambitious and highly useful, as you are likely to find anything you, as a beginner, will need to look up. The only thing is that it is not designed to be used alone, and you could find youself struggling if you don't have a teacher to guide you, or a basic book which spoonfeeds you everything.
Overall, however, it is a very handy book for the student of the Russian language.
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A dense, discouraging but thorough introduction to Russian.
Rating (2)
Date: 2001-11-23
32 out of 38 customers found this reveiw helpful
I've been wrestling with two Russian for Beginners books on my own for the last year. The end of this one is finally in sight, thank God. It's a book which is by turns frustrating and rewarding.
Frustrating because the authors, for some reason, feel it is necessary that as a beginner I learn how to say "tonight there will be a fancy dress competition", "in Russia 60 per cent of all health care specialists are female" and "I am writing a dissertation about education in Russia". All this before teaching me how to tell the time or buy train tickets.
Frustrating because at the beginning of every new chapter you're confronted with 50 or 60 new words to learn as well as 2 or 3 ridiculously silly grammar rules (the fact that Russian grammar is silly is obviously not the authors' fault). There's no revision, no consolidation, no time to sit back and say, "yep, learnt that".
Frustrating because the Berlin wall fell 12 years ago (alright only 8 when this book was written). But do we get anything of interest about post Soviet Russia? Net.
But despite its serious shortcomings this book is rewarding. Rewarding because it is thorough. If you invest time and patience in this book, you cannot fail to learn a lot. A fair bit of the subject matter is useful and interesting and the taped conversations and oral excercises are excellent.
Apart from that I'd say that the overall presentation is poor and that the careless mistakes which crop up in more or less every chapter show a lack of respect for the student.
This is not a bad book. It does the job. But if you are on your own and you are not a) a genius or b) a masochist, you will need something lighter to go with it.
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Retail Price: £13.99
Amazon.com's Price:£5.67
That's 59% Off!
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