Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5009 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-28
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Synopsis
Whether you're learning alone or attending classes, you'll find this complete Russian language course for beginners both accessible and indispensable. Designed to provide the student with an excellent command of basic Russian (the equivalent of A level standard) this book features thirty lessons punctuated by revision exercises to ensure you have fully understood what you have learned. The emphasis is on acquiring vocabulary, experiencing conversational language and learning useful grammar. This book also includes a vocabulary of 1,500 words and a glossary of grammatical terms.

Customer Reviews

Help please
Can someone tell me if this book has accents to show where the stress falls on a word? I have used "Oxford Take Off in Russian", which does have these accents, and found it very good, if a bit thin. So I bought another book Basic "Russian: A Grammar and Workbook", but the lack of accents renders it virtually useless for self-study.
Thanks

Discipline pays off!
This was a book I picked up whilst browsing one day, and bought on a whim. Little did I know that I was buying the book that would develop my knowledge of Russian far more than any other, and supplemented my understanding of the language to an extraordinary degree.

The description of grammar and the case system is punctuated throughout with recap exercises, which with practice burn-in these difficult rules without the reader realising it. In common with an earlier review, the choice of vocabulary is unusual and therefore this is not the best 'stand-alone' textbook, but by dint of this fact it has proved, in my experience, the very best supplement to an academic course that money can buy. The conversations and essays forming the end of each chapter are extremely useful, and add some eclectic knowledge to the basic that the beginner will run into. Armed with the first 10 chapters of this book, my first visit to Russia was a far easier experience because of some of the more unusual elements learned.

This is gaining an almost 'cult' following amongst students of Russian, being informative, brilliantly presented and immensely usable. The structure over 21 chapters means that these are digestible blocks of knowledge that can be repeated as needed without becoming too 'bogged down'. This is the best Russian reference book I own.

I love this book!
I don't know why but I do! When it first arrived I opened it to be greated with "what the hell is this going on about?!?!?!". So it went to one side for a while..... Well, after studying for a while and learning more from my course and to be honest more "beginner freindly" titles I thought I'd dig it out and give it another pop. I was not dissapointed! The book deals with many little extras that other books don't, such as voiced/unvoiced letters, a good section of help with stress and pronunciation. It deals with the various cases well with nice examples and good questions for you to test yourself, I found the vocabulary good - especially when starting out as it has an english pheonetic bit to help you unlike many books in which you are left to assume your reading of cyrillic is right.
I really recommend this excellent book.