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Russian Step By Step: Beginner
This is the fourth edition of 'Russian Step By Step', Beginner Level 1. This book is the second step in Russian Step By Step learning system. It comes after Reading Russian Workbook, which teaches the alphabet, basic rules of pronunciation, reading and some basic grammar. 'Russian Step By Step', Beginner, Level 1 is designed for beginners, who are learning Russian in their own countries. It can be used with or without a teacher. Grammar is simplified. Only the very basic rules are given. It can be especially attractive for those who attempted to learn Russian and failed, because they were overwhelmed with the amount of grammar and vocabulary. But, at the same time, it covers the core grammar, which means that the book is structured. After finishing this book students are supposed to have solid knowledge of the Russian Cases System of nouns and to be ready to move to the next level. The book has a lot of drawings and charts that make the learning process fun and easy to follow. An audio component help students memorize new vocabulary and understand the language as it is commonly spoken. In order to learn about the options regarding audio CD visit our russianstepbystep.com/
382 pages, Paperback
First published February 20, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 24, 2014
This a a wonderful resource for a beginner, who has done a little bit of work in Russian and can read Russian. If you are a total beginner - start with the total beginner book, it really spells it out and you will learn to read quickly.
In this book you will review some reading rules and plunge right into it. Each lesson has a text and/or dialogue then exercises. It looks as if it has pretty much no English in the book but actually all the English is at the back of the book! All the lessons are translated, grammar explanations given and the answer keys, tables and dictionaries are there.
Make sure to read the beginning of the book and understand how to work with the book,if you follow it - it will work like a charm.
I love the free audio download from the author's website. But you can just listen to the tracks directly on her website.
There are over 6 hours of audio that comes with this book - it's rather amazing. I love how natural all the voices are - no drones or falseness. There are many different people who speak on it ( 4?5?) so you get exposed to different ways of saying things.
In this book you will review some reading rules and plunge right into it. Each lesson has a text and/or dialogue then exercises. It looks as if it has pretty much no English in the book but actually all the English is at the back of the book! All the lessons are translated, grammar explanations given and the answer keys, tables and dictionaries are there.
Make sure to read the beginning of the book and understand how to work with the book,if you follow it - it will work like a charm.
I love the free audio download from the author's website. But you can just listen to the tracks directly on her website.
There are over 6 hours of audio that comes with this book - it's rather amazing. I love how natural all the voices are - no drones or falseness. There are many different people who speak on it ( 4?5?) so you get exposed to different ways of saying things.
February 10, 2022
tl;dr
Not an awful book, is an okay introduction to Russian, and the push for more immersion is nice, but it's riddled with mistakes, and the organization of the content makes it frustrating to use.
Not tl;dr:
I bought this book years ago after needing a replacement with the textbook I had to buy for college. (That book was so bad, even the teacher hated using it.) I saw this book recommended to use instead of that one, and picked it up. I finally had the time and motivation to dive into it and my main thoughts--it's okay. (shrug)
I do like that it comes with so much audio to go through. I like that it has exercises (and answers), dialogue to practice with, and the usual things you expect with language learning books. It's ordered pretty well as far as gradual introduction, grammar, and increasing difficulty.
I liked how short/bite-sized each chapter was though. You could go through them fairly quickly.
But I do have some issues.
The audio quality isn't 100%, and the background noise can get distracting at times. If you're expecting top tier textbook quality, this doesn't have it, but in general it's still a nice asset that the book comes with, and I appreciate that it's there.
There are 21 chapters and each section for them are NOT grouped together. The first chunk of the book is the exercises + some dialogue, then the next chunk is the grammar explanations, and the rest of the book is extras: audio scripts, exercise answers, RU->EN and EN->RU dictionary. It was disorienting at first, that the chapters were split apart across the book. I ended up needing three bookmarks for each section: the exercises, the grammar, and the answers. It was a pain, I'm not sure why the author decided to do this? Why not have all of chapter 1's content together, then chapter 2, etc.?
I also found quite a few explanations lacking. The grammar sections are pretty short, and examples can be few and far in between. I had to clarify things with my native speaking partner a few times. I wish there were more pictures/visuals as well.
You'll notice I didn't mention any vocabulary lists, as there are none. You have to either know what the words used in the book are already, or look them up in the dictionary. The lack of vocab list and additional explanations was INSANELY annoying. They don't teach you what 95% of the words they use in the chapters are, so you have to flip to the back of the book for every. single. one. My partner wondered if they were aiming for more immersion, which works well enough for the first few chapters (and I actually LIKED that!! I wish more books did that!), but quickly becomes impossible as things get more complex. NGL I ended up just looking at the answers a lot or asking my partner if I was too lazy to constantly look up each and every word.
I also found many mistakes in the book: One of the exercise titles was misspelled, I found an English spelling mistake in chapter 15 and 20, one of the exercises had an extra answer for a question that wasn't there, and one answer had the formal вы despite the question asking for гы, another in chapter 20 straight up had a different answer. Some of the scripts didn't align with the audio as well, or the scripts referenced the wrong page number to read along. There was also a mistranslation in the script of chapter 17. A chart in the grammar section of chapter 21 also says it is past tense when it is in present tense.
So nothing big, but a LOT, a LOT of little things, and those add up. I also can't know if there are any Russian mistakes, since I'm obviously a beginner, but all these mistakes do make me concerned about the accuracy there too, since typos happen, or things might've changed in the editing process.
Though more upsetting was the missing audio. Chapter 8 had some missing, and chapter 9 had no audio at all, despite being marked as having them in the book. (I just had my partner read those ones too me, but not everyone has a native speaker handy!)
I definitely think they could've benefited from another proofread or two to catch these issues. Even just one more proofread would've caught quite a few, no doubt, since there are so many.
I suppose my expectations were set so high, given that this book has only high rating reviews (on Amazon), and was directly recommended as a replacement for the last book I tried, that I was expecting more.
If it didn't have SO MANY errors, and everything else remained the same, I think this book would already be much better. It's not my ideal textbook, but I don't think it was a waste for me to go through it. (Especially since I already had it lying around, haha.) Would I buy the next ones in the series? Probably not. I think I'd rather move on to other sources.
All in all, it was okay. Wish it was better.
Not an awful book, is an okay introduction to Russian, and the push for more immersion is nice, but it's riddled with mistakes, and the organization of the content makes it frustrating to use.
Not tl;dr:
I bought this book years ago after needing a replacement with the textbook I had to buy for college. (That book was so bad, even the teacher hated using it.) I saw this book recommended to use instead of that one, and picked it up. I finally had the time and motivation to dive into it and my main thoughts--it's okay. (shrug)
I do like that it comes with so much audio to go through. I like that it has exercises (and answers), dialogue to practice with, and the usual things you expect with language learning books. It's ordered pretty well as far as gradual introduction, grammar, and increasing difficulty.
I liked how short/bite-sized each chapter was though. You could go through them fairly quickly.
But I do have some issues.
The audio quality isn't 100%, and the background noise can get distracting at times. If you're expecting top tier textbook quality, this doesn't have it, but in general it's still a nice asset that the book comes with, and I appreciate that it's there.
There are 21 chapters and each section for them are NOT grouped together. The first chunk of the book is the exercises + some dialogue, then the next chunk is the grammar explanations, and the rest of the book is extras: audio scripts, exercise answers, RU->EN and EN->RU dictionary. It was disorienting at first, that the chapters were split apart across the book. I ended up needing three bookmarks for each section: the exercises, the grammar, and the answers. It was a pain, I'm not sure why the author decided to do this? Why not have all of chapter 1's content together, then chapter 2, etc.?
I also found quite a few explanations lacking. The grammar sections are pretty short, and examples can be few and far in between. I had to clarify things with my native speaking partner a few times. I wish there were more pictures/visuals as well.
You'll notice I didn't mention any vocabulary lists, as there are none. You have to either know what the words used in the book are already, or look them up in the dictionary. The lack of vocab list and additional explanations was INSANELY annoying. They don't teach you what 95% of the words they use in the chapters are, so you have to flip to the back of the book for every. single. one. My partner wondered if they were aiming for more immersion, which works well enough for the first few chapters (and I actually LIKED that!! I wish more books did that!), but quickly becomes impossible as things get more complex. NGL I ended up just looking at the answers a lot or asking my partner if I was too lazy to constantly look up each and every word.
I also found many mistakes in the book: One of the exercise titles was misspelled, I found an English spelling mistake in chapter 15 and 20, one of the exercises had an extra answer for a question that wasn't there, and one answer had the formal вы despite the question asking for гы, another in chapter 20 straight up had a different answer. Some of the scripts didn't align with the audio as well, or the scripts referenced the wrong page number to read along. There was also a mistranslation in the script of chapter 17. A chart in the grammar section of chapter 21 also says it is past tense when it is in present tense.
So nothing big, but a LOT, a LOT of little things, and those add up. I also can't know if there are any Russian mistakes, since I'm obviously a beginner, but all these mistakes do make me concerned about the accuracy there too, since typos happen, or things might've changed in the editing process.
Though more upsetting was the missing audio. Chapter 8 had some missing, and chapter 9 had no audio at all, despite being marked as having them in the book. (I just had my partner read those ones too me, but not everyone has a native speaker handy!)
I definitely think they could've benefited from another proofread or two to catch these issues. Even just one more proofread would've caught quite a few, no doubt, since there are so many.
I suppose my expectations were set so high, given that this book has only high rating reviews (on Amazon), and was directly recommended as a replacement for the last book I tried, that I was expecting more.
If it didn't have SO MANY errors, and everything else remained the same, I think this book would already be much better. It's not my ideal textbook, but I don't think it was a waste for me to go through it. (Especially since I already had it lying around, haha.) Would I buy the next ones in the series? Probably not. I think I'd rather move on to other sources.
All in all, it was okay. Wish it was better.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews