Russian (Teach Yourself Books)

by Daphne M. West, Teach Yourself Publishing, Daphne M. West, etc.

Release Date: August, 1992

Edition: Paperback

Price:

More Info

Avoid this book!

I had the misfortune of using this book for an adult education course in beginning Russian that I recently took. I have since stopped using this book because I felt that the author did a rather sloppy and hurried job of trying to introduce the language. Because of the rapid pace that the book proceeded with, I felt intimidated by the Russian grammar.

Each chapter is crammed full of grammatical points, each of which is only sparingly covered and not at all reinforced into the student's mind. There are not enough exercises at the end of each chapter, so the student is forced to look for other resources in this regard.

The book also contains a number of typographic errors and misplacement of stress marks which only reinforces my view of how poorly this book was designed.

If you are looking for an introductory book in the Russian language, then I would definitely suggest that you look elsewhere. More student-friendly alternatives would include The New Penguin Russian Course and, my favorite, RussianAlive!

Not for use without Wade's grammar

This course is okay, although I did the 1st edition 1992 which had two problems this new edition hopefully doesn't have : firstly all the Soviet vocabulary (Leningrad rather the St. Petersburg etc.) but that will presumably have gone in the 1996 edition. The second was the amount of mistakes in the accent marking. Almost every page had one or two accent errors. (It would be nice if the next reviewer could comment on whether the accents are in the right place on, say, p240: predlagaet, Baikala, kilometrovii, lovlya)

A third problem which will still be with the revised edition is that Russian grammar cannot possibly be fully taught in a beginners book. Anyone studying Russian also needs Wade's grammar and either Pirogova's verb book or the "501" or "750" Russian verbs books. An accented reader like "Innostranka" would be a useful next step.