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Beginner's Ukrainian with Interactive Online Workbook, 3rd Integrated edition
This popular language textbook with an interactive website offers an easy, effective, and fun way for beginners to learn how to read, write, speak and understand Ukrainian.
The Third Integrated edition is integrated with the Ukrainian-English Collocation Dictionary (2021) via a set of specially designed lexical and syntactic exercises in each of its 15 lessons.
Beginner's Ukrainian covers such common conversational topics as meeting people, traveling, shopping, hobbies, family relations, vacationing, meals, weather, and much more. Priority is given to developing learners' conversational skills while providing them with a solid grammar foundation. The book's companion website offers a wealth of interactive conversational, grammar, and phonetic drills designed for use by both independent and instructor-led learners.
The book includes 15 useful lessons, covering everyday situations such as introductions, family, and shopping. An interactive website featuring audio dialogues and exercises recorded using native speakers is also available to users. The guide also
Useful cultural and grammatical notesAppendices of critical information, including declension tables, noun endings, common Ukrainian names, numbers, verb conjugations and more.A Ukrainian-English/ English-Ukrainian dictionary of words used in the book
The Third Integrated edition is integrated with the Ukrainian-English Collocation Dictionary (2021) via a set of specially designed lexical and syntactic exercises in each of its 15 lessons.
Beginner's Ukrainian covers such common conversational topics as meeting people, traveling, shopping, hobbies, family relations, vacationing, meals, weather, and much more. Priority is given to developing learners' conversational skills while providing them with a solid grammar foundation. The book's companion website offers a wealth of interactive conversational, grammar, and phonetic drills designed for use by both independent and instructor-led learners.
The book includes 15 useful lessons, covering everyday situations such as introductions, family, and shopping. An interactive website featuring audio dialogues and exercises recorded using native speakers is also available to users. The guide also
Useful cultural and grammatical notesAppendices of critical information, including declension tables, noun endings, common Ukrainian names, numbers, verb conjugations and more.A Ukrainian-English/ English-Ukrainian dictionary of words used in the book
1291 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 16, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 13, 2025
For learning in general the book has an amazing structure to it, but the content is unorganized and not well thought out for *beginners* learning *Ukrainian*.
First, the textbook isn't teaching Ukrainian exclusively. It teaches conversational Ukrainian which uses a mix of Ukrainian and Russian. The author is up front about this at the start of the textbook, but makes no attempt to distinguish between Ukrainian words/phrases and Russian in the lessons/exercises. An early example of this is the Ukrainian word євро. In Note 2.7, it is shown as the Ukrainian word, євро, but is then shown as the Russian word, евро, with the Russian pronunciation in all exercises (see exercises 2.13 and 2.14).
The textbook also tries to hammer in the idea that В,в is pronounced like an English 'w' when, to the best of my knowledge, that isn't true at all.... It takes on a /w/ like sound in some cases, but it's more like a buzzing /w/ made by lightly touching the bottom teeth to the upper lip. It's similar to the English word "of" in that "f" isn't pronounced like "f" in fish, but like a buzzing 'f' that almost sounds like v. It doesn't fully take on the v sound, only partially.
The exercises are also really bad about including content that hasn't been taught yet or isn't available in the dictionary. For example, lesson 5 exercises start asking you to form plural possessive words, but these forms were never provided previously. Lesson 2 introduces мій моя моє, but never introduces the plural form мої between lesson 2 and the lesson 5 exercises. I frequently find myself looking up and double checking information provided in nearly every lesson exercise because new phrases or grammar are introduced unexpectedly.
It also seems like the proofreader skipped over lessons and stopped halfway through the ones they did choose to review. There are numerous discrepancies between the textbook exercises, the audio files, and the PDF and they get more frequent as you progress through the textbook. There are also formatting issues that make working with some of the exercises difficult.
For example, exercise 1.6 says to practice the use of i and та, but the audio file never once uses та. Exercise 3.18 starts at the bottom of one page and continues on the next, forcing you to flip the page between the exercise description and chart. There are a handful more that are broken up like this making it difficult to follow and complete.
Exercise 4.7 audio doesn't align with the model shown in the textbook.
Exercise 4.19 it was very unclear where the audio file was for the text I needed to listen to after reading the exercise questions.
Note 4.7 really doesn't belong in lesson 4, it should be in lesson 5 with the other lesson material on noun forms. Details of note 4.7 aren't even utilized in lesson 4, so I'm not sure why it would be in lesson 4.
Exercise 4.21 has nothing to do with the "above text", is not on the PDF answer key, and does not have an audio file. It's a completely useless exercise.
Exercise 5.9 audio does not match the textbook word list in order or in all words shown.
Exercise 5.11, is a good example of how the textbook doesn't point out when regional dialects are being used. The audio for number 10 reads український; grammatically wrong for the sentence, but still technically correct and the textbook doesn't stop to point out "hey, this is grammatically wrong, but still correct because....". Thankfully I took two years to just listen to the language and get accustomed to hearing it before starting this textbook because there's no way I would have been able to hear the difference between український and українське as an absolute beginner.
I'm also not a fan of the cursive font chosen. It's incredibly difficult to read and I find myself frequently going back to an old Ukrainian handwriting book I have to double check how some cursive letters are written despite the fact that I feel incredibly confident with my Cyrillic cursive.
Overall, the textbook is good, but I don't recommend this for beginners *at all*. I recommend taking a year or two to listen to the language first before starting this textbook. Don't focus too much on learning vocabulary, but rather focus on hearing, pronunciation, and writing (print and cursive). Yes, cursive sucks, but you actually do need to be able to read cursive for Ukrainian. Once you feel comfortable with those the textbook becomes a lot easier to navigate. The discrepancies between the audio, pdf answer key, and textbook make this book nearly impossible to work through if you can't comfortably hear, write, or pronounce (not translate) the language.
First, the textbook isn't teaching Ukrainian exclusively. It teaches conversational Ukrainian which uses a mix of Ukrainian and Russian. The author is up front about this at the start of the textbook, but makes no attempt to distinguish between Ukrainian words/phrases and Russian in the lessons/exercises. An early example of this is the Ukrainian word євро. In Note 2.7, it is shown as the Ukrainian word, євро, but is then shown as the Russian word, евро, with the Russian pronunciation in all exercises (see exercises 2.13 and 2.14).
The textbook also tries to hammer in the idea that В,в is pronounced like an English 'w' when, to the best of my knowledge, that isn't true at all.... It takes on a /w/ like sound in some cases, but it's more like a buzzing /w/ made by lightly touching the bottom teeth to the upper lip. It's similar to the English word "of" in that "f" isn't pronounced like "f" in fish, but like a buzzing 'f' that almost sounds like v. It doesn't fully take on the v sound, only partially.
The exercises are also really bad about including content that hasn't been taught yet or isn't available in the dictionary. For example, lesson 5 exercises start asking you to form plural possessive words, but these forms were never provided previously. Lesson 2 introduces мій моя моє, but never introduces the plural form мої between lesson 2 and the lesson 5 exercises. I frequently find myself looking up and double checking information provided in nearly every lesson exercise because new phrases or grammar are introduced unexpectedly.
It also seems like the proofreader skipped over lessons and stopped halfway through the ones they did choose to review. There are numerous discrepancies between the textbook exercises, the audio files, and the PDF and they get more frequent as you progress through the textbook. There are also formatting issues that make working with some of the exercises difficult.
For example, exercise 1.6 says to practice the use of i and та, but the audio file never once uses та. Exercise 3.18 starts at the bottom of one page and continues on the next, forcing you to flip the page between the exercise description and chart. There are a handful more that are broken up like this making it difficult to follow and complete.
Exercise 4.7 audio doesn't align with the model shown in the textbook.
Exercise 4.19 it was very unclear where the audio file was for the text I needed to listen to after reading the exercise questions.
Note 4.7 really doesn't belong in lesson 4, it should be in lesson 5 with the other lesson material on noun forms. Details of note 4.7 aren't even utilized in lesson 4, so I'm not sure why it would be in lesson 4.
Exercise 4.21 has nothing to do with the "above text", is not on the PDF answer key, and does not have an audio file. It's a completely useless exercise.
Exercise 5.9 audio does not match the textbook word list in order or in all words shown.
Exercise 5.11, is a good example of how the textbook doesn't point out when regional dialects are being used. The audio for number 10 reads український; grammatically wrong for the sentence, but still technically correct and the textbook doesn't stop to point out "hey, this is grammatically wrong, but still correct because....". Thankfully I took two years to just listen to the language and get accustomed to hearing it before starting this textbook because there's no way I would have been able to hear the difference between український and українське as an absolute beginner.
I'm also not a fan of the cursive font chosen. It's incredibly difficult to read and I find myself frequently going back to an old Ukrainian handwriting book I have to double check how some cursive letters are written despite the fact that I feel incredibly confident with my Cyrillic cursive.
Overall, the textbook is good, but I don't recommend this for beginners *at all*. I recommend taking a year or two to listen to the language first before starting this textbook. Don't focus too much on learning vocabulary, but rather focus on hearing, pronunciation, and writing (print and cursive). Yes, cursive sucks, but you actually do need to be able to read cursive for Ukrainian. Once you feel comfortable with those the textbook becomes a lot easier to navigate. The discrepancies between the audio, pdf answer key, and textbook make this book nearly impossible to work through if you can't comfortably hear, write, or pronounce (not translate) the language.
January 24, 2025
Actually, I reread this Workbook 1st edition (personally) in order to advise my foreign friends, as to start learning Ukrainian language (from my experience). And the next recommendation is the dictionary by the same author Yuri I. Shevchuk "The Ukrainian-English Collocation Dictionary" (2nd edition) with additions, and of course +practice ;-)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
February 17, 2025
This is not for beginners and not user-friendly whatsoever.f
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews