Thread: What is the best book for learning russian for a beginner?

Hi.

I a few summers ago used the teach yourself books - found it a little confusing but grasped the basics. I now have the pimsleur russian cds and am working through them, but would like a really good book to help me with the written and gramatical stuff etc, and for the harder speaking skills.

Can I have any suggestions?

Thanks
Andy

I have the Teach Yourself Beginner's Russian and Teach Yourself Russian. I think they are the most useless books on the planet.

Everybody here recommends the The New Penguin Russian Course, by Nicholas J. Brown. I have purchased it, and just started reading it. It seems to be much better than the Teach Yourself books.

Good luck, I'm a beginner myself. They are very helpful on this forum, you'll find.

http://half.ebay.com/cat/buy/prod.cg...8448&pr=733163

The link you posted is no good, as I live in the UK. Nevertheless I will have a look at amazon or something - sure I will find it somewhere.

Andrew

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/...929400-4071869

Try that one. Sorry.

Have bought it - Got a second hand copy, and including postage came to just over

Try this web site

http://www.princeton.edu/russian/SLA101/

I find the materials there very good. The author /lecturer does have a good sense of humour. It has grammar, vocab as well as the relevant sound files. Only thing missing is the answers to the questions /exercises. Otherwise I think it would be perfect.

I am not sure how long the materials will stay there or when the site becomes inaccessible, so try it while it's still there.

Wow that does look good. thanks for the share.

Andy

А вообще , лучше всего учить язык с его носителем!
I`m russian and can help u without any books

There are tons of people wanting to help others with their Russian on the forum but none of them, as far as I remember, have ever said that s/he can help without any books at all! We aren't kids, dude!

The New Penguin is generally considered the best.

The entire Teach Yourseld range is shite. I have TY Hungarian and TY Ukrainian. Utter rubbish. Don't bother. The only use is if you listen to the CDs they come with for pronunciation.

Hi Andy, glad you find the materials useful. I think it would be good if we can study from the common material and discuss the difficult parts. If we can get more people to learn from a this material we could help motivate each other. One of the problems I find is that I tend to stop studying when the going gets tough and I don't seem to be improving. A bunch of study mates will definitely help keep the interest alive.

Hope I can post some of the parts I find difficult to you. I must admit I am quite a slow learner, and pretty weak at languages.

Yer that sounds good. I have worked though the first few lessons fairly quickly, but I need to really study some of the next ones - but I too think I will be slow to learn languages. Perhaps you could drop me an email? andrewsco_at_gmail_dot_com

I leave for a weeks holiday in france on Saturday, but have a weeks holiday after that, so I'm happy to work on the resource with you then.

Andy

I like the Golosa textbook by Richard Robin. All the audio spport is available for free on the web..so don't by the tapes. Check out the George Washington University
website. http://www.gwu.edu/~slavic/golosa/golosa.htm

I like the Golosa textbook by Richard Robin. All the audio spport is available for free on the web..so don't by the tapes. Check out the George Washington University
website. http://www.gwu.edu/~slavic/golosa/golosa.htm

That's great Andy. Now there's at least a virtual study partner. I worked up to about lesson 20 last year then sort of lost interest up until last month. Will go through that again and then there should be some common areas we can discuss.

Do you think it would be a good idea we start a new thread, maybe called Study using Princeton University materials? If ok, maybe you could give it a more catchy title - hopefully we can get others. And I think the Getting Started section would be appropriate.

What do you think?

I am lerning Russian from French, with a book and audio CDs. I recently bought a real grammar book. I think this is invaluable, otherwise you will never understand it completely.
Bob

Originally Posted by tohca

Hi Andy, glad you find the materials useful. I think it would be good if we can study from the common material and discuss the difficult parts. If we can get more people to learn from a this material we could help motivate each other. One of the problems I find is that I tend to stop studying when the going gets tough and I don't seem to be improving. A bunch of study mates will definitely help keep the interest alive.

Hope I can post some of the parts I find difficult to you. I must admit I am quite a slow learner, and pretty weak at languages.

Hey,
I'm new also, can I join the party? I need motivation sometimes. I know what you mean, when I seem to be getting stuck I stop studying for a while, and then I get even more frustrated. A kick in the pants is very helpful sometimes!

Why of course, that's the idea. Do you already have the Princeton study materials? And any suggestions about an appropriate and catchy title for our group?

Hope Andy comes up with something. If we can recruit a 'class' of at least 10, I am sure we'd be in a good position to help motivate each other. Maybe even get one of the experts on this forum to act as our mentor /facilitator. I don't mind paying, if the fees are right, to attend a 'virtual' class if someone will start one. Have tried to look around the web site for Princeton, alas was not able to find such a class, sigh.........

Originally Posted by tohca

Why of course, that's the idea. Do you already have the Princeton study materials? And any suggestions about an appropriate and catchy title for our group?

Hope Andy comes up with something. If we can recruit a 'class' of at least 10, I am sure we'd be in a good position to help motivate each other. Maybe even get one of the experts on this forum to act as our mentor /facilitator. I don't mind paying, if the fees are right, to attend a 'virtual' class if someone will start one. Have tried to look around the web site for Princeton, alas was not able to find such a class, sigh.........

I'm saving the Princeton stuff on my computer now. I'll probably print them out to study. What "fees" are you talking about? I cannot attend a virtual class because my only computer access at the moment is at work. I can do forum type stuff, but I can't sit undisturbed for any length of time.

My Russian teacher is using a book called начало.