Thread: русский язык

Has anyone used this book by Ю Г Овсиенко ?

If so, is it any good?

Best,
Tim

Even without seeing this book I would not recommend a textbook written by a Russian. The Russian style of instruction is not what we are used to and is more like rote learning. There are several good texts by Westerners, but they will cost a lot more. OTOH they come with CDs & DVDs. This site has a section dedicated to discussion of textbooks. I have worked with Начало (first- and second-year sets) and have also heard that Голоса is good.

Thanks for the advice. I already have "Penguin New Russian Course" that people rave about, so I can use that. Plus I have Pimsleur.

Best Wishes,
Tim

Originally Posted by haelen

Has anyone used this book by Ю Г Овсиенко ?

If so, is it any good?

i get it.
it's great if you are learning russian with a good teacher.
it's not so useful if you're doing it by your own.
grammar rules are not so well explained, and as chaika said its style of instruction is different, maybe better if you have a guide, but i advise you against it.

Originally Posted by haelen

Thanks for the advice. I already have "Penguin New Russian Course" that people rave about, so I can use that. Plus I have Pimsleur.

Best Wishes,
Tim

ehi, what do you think about it? is it good?
is a grammar book or what else?
please could you give me all the informations you can?
i'd buy it... maybe... i don't know.

Originally Posted by diletta

Originally Posted by haelen

Thanks for the advice. I already have "Penguin New Russian Course" that people rave about, so I can use that. Plus I have Pimsleur.

Best Wishes,
Tim

ehi, what do you think about it? is it good?
is a grammar book or what else?
please could you give me all the informations you can?
i'd buy it... maybe... i don't know.

It's a good book. It basically starts from the very beginning, with the Cyrillic alphabet, and then teaches ~ the equivalent of a 1st year Russian course over the next 30 lessons. The biggest pro, in my opinion, is that the book is extremely well organized. The material is taught in a logical fashion and there are great tables and such. The basic format is that each chapter teaches a few grammatical concepts, then gives a list of vocabulary for the chapter, a few exercises, and a couple of readings to test the grammatical concepts. It's also pretty cheap, running about $12 new.

The downside is that there is no audio included with the book, which you really are going to need unless you've got a native speaker who can help you out. It also tends to be a bit dry at times, but IMO it's much nicer than a 'pure' grammar book like Schaum's.

Originally Posted by Grogs

It's a good book. It basically starts from the very beginning, with the Cyrillic alphabet, and then teaches ~ the equivalent of a 1st year Russian course over the next 30 lessons. The biggest pro, in my opinion, is that the book is extremely well organized. The material is taught in a logical fashion and there are great tables and such. The basic format is that each chapter teaches a few grammatical concepts, then gives a list of vocabulary for the chapter, a few exercises, and a couple of readings to test the grammatical concepts. It's also pretty cheap, running about $12 new.

The downside is that there is no audio included with the book, which you really are going to need unless you've got a native speaker who can help you out. It also tends to be a bit dry at times, but IMO it's much nicer than a 'pure' grammar book like Schaum's.

mmm i'm really doubtful.
i already got books like that, but as you said it's cheap, so...
just another question, be patient please: could i check exercises by my own?
thanks!

Originally Posted by diletta

mmm i'm really doubtful.
i already got books like that, but as you said it's cheap, so...
just another question, be patient please: could i check exercises by my own?
thanks!

Yes. The New Penguin book has the answers to all the exercises in the back of the book. It also has the English translation for every story, which is nice. Before you run out and buy the New Penguin book though, you might check out a couple of the free online books.

The first is the Princeton Russian course, which you can download here:

http://www.freelanguagecourses.com/c...guage/russian/

I've worked through about 15 lessons of this one and I think it's pretty good. The lessons are pretty entertaining, and I find the explanations quite useful. It also includes lots of audio in MP3 format. The download includes both the first and second year of the Princeton course, so there's lots of material there.

The other online book that I know of is "С азов", which can be found here:

http://www.gefix.net/sazov/

I've glanced through the pages and it looks really well done, but I've never actually tried to work through it.

that's great, thanks a lot!

I totally agree with Grogs on the Princton study material. It's absolutely fantastic what they have there, and the amazing part is that it is free. The audio files are very clear and entertaining too.

With, Sazov there are no free sound files, but if you make use of this forum for aid in the listening sections, it really helps. There is a section on this forum which has some audio of this course recorded already. It can be found at the Grammar & Vocabulary section of this forum.

For the Penguin book, I think it is really good value for money. Only drawback is that there are not enough practice exercise for the grammar portion. I am thinking of ordering the Schaum's Russian Grammar from Amazon as the bookshops here in Malaysia do not carry many Russian titles.

I know, as Grogs mentioned about Schaum being a tad dry, but I hope it will prove invaluable in drilling home the important points on grammar.

Wonder if anyone can share their experience with the Schaum book?

Hey guys, I thought I'd add my two cents into the whole textbook thing. I've been studying for a long while now and I think I've finally found what works best for me at least.

Check out "Using Russian: A Guide to Contemporary Usage" by Dereck Offord.
Its not so much a text book in the sense that it has lesson plans and exercises, but its a great all in one resource material.

It has a unanimous 5/5 rating on amazon and its not too pricey (30$).

I got it a while ago, and its amazing how concise and useful it is.

It has sections on
- register of speech
- cases and gender tables for nouns and adjectives of course
- a slang section
- a preposition database
- a collection of words difficult to render from Russian to English and vice versa
- Russian homophones and near homophones (which are pretty much homophones to us)
- the general meaning of prefixes of the verbs
- etiquette
- vulgarisms
- inflection
and about 20 others sections I don't feel like numbering

If you had a good book full of lessons, a great dictionary (I use an electronic one I got in Russia called "alphalex"), and this grammar reference I think you'd be all set.

I mistakenly bought a verb book as well as an idiom dictionary, but I'd recommend just using the websight www.multitran.ru for idioms, and getting alphalex for verb conjugations (it has a neat feature where you can just right click any word and it will pop up with a definition, a few examples, a table of conjugations with accent indicated, theres even a little wizard guy who will pronounce the word for you if you tell him too.)

You can get alphalex here for 5$
http://www.myzips.com/software/AlfaLex.phtml
believe me its definitely worth it.