TROIKA : A Communicative Approach to Russian Language, Life, and Culture

by Marita Nummikoski

Release Date: 10 June, 1994

Edition: Hardcover

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Not bad for beginners

My university uses this book in first-year Russian. To be honest, I hated this book for the first several chapters/weeks. It takes a while to get used to the way it is arranged, because everything is presented in Russian first, then explained in English at the end. This is somewhat overwhelming for the beginner; however, if you aren't willing to plow on through, you probably won't be a very successful Russian speaker anyway. Anyone who expects a textbook to magically make learning Russian easy is probably in for an unpleasant surprise no matter what book they choose.

Once we got used to the format, however, this book works very well. Unfortunately there is no intermediate book to follow it up yet, so our university had us using a completely different textbook for second-year. After using the new textbook, which is not very good and way too expensive for a paperback, I realize how good Troika really was. There aren't a whole lot of Beginner Russian textbooks out there, so if you're looking into a new textbook for your class, take a look at this one.

"kind of like the opposite of an aerial view"

I have attempted to learn from this book in a first-level university Russian course. (I am a middle-aged retired teacher, and already have some background in 4 languages, with reasonable success in all of them.) I'm sure that there's some sort of pedagogical theory which justifies the book's structure, but I find it a constant barrier to my learning. Each chapter is structured in the same way. Each starts with a Russian-only treatment of the materials to be covered in the chapter. Of course, virtually all the material is new to the reader at that point. The Russian section has pointers, therefore, into the following grammatical section, which is in English, and is at the end of the chapter. Unfortunately, the presented material is not well linearized, so after having stopped in mid-stream to read those grammar sections, and having flipped back and forth for a while, one still hasn't encountered all of the vocabulary and concepts in the current section. A chapter makes sense only when one has completed it, meaning that the process of learning is constantly frustrating, and lacking in the pleasures and rewards of mastery along the way. I don't find it any better to use as a review aid when test time comes along. If your prof has selected the text, you're stuck with it; I'd suggest finding some supporting ancillary materials, and using them from day one. I have the luxury of dropping the class. I've found a "Russian as a Second Language" series published in Russia for English speakers, and will hire a native-speaker college student to help me work my way through it. (The title is from a Steely Dan song, by the way. I'm a big believer in aerial views in first-level courses.)