Recommendations for learning Russian

[Rita]

We are interested in learning Russian, and there are so many options out there!! Could you share what you used and how successful it was?

Blessings,

Rita

[elegantlion]

We started off with Russian this year and had to stop due to timing.

 

Our class was centered about this text, the Penguin Russian Course. It's actually quite nice, we made it through chapter 3. There is no CD, it's downfall.

 

We used the following other sites for audio:

 

Best Russian Websites - a plethora of links

Russian For Everyone - nice free online course

 

We also had started the Foreign Services Institute Russian - which my link seems to have been broken, but I found another link here.

 

I know some people have used Golosa, which I only briefly looked into.

[Mnemosyne]

When I learned Russian, I loved the Penguin Russian course and the Nachalo textbooks (you'd probably need a CD if you don't have an instructor). There are also some free courses online.

 

http://www.freelanguagecourses.com/language/russian/princeton-russian-course-51/ The Princeton Russian course was fairly good and free.

 

The DLI courses are available online for free too, they are a little older but there is some pretty good audio. S Azov is okay too, but I haven't played around with it too much.

[regentrude]

Our Russian prof uses

 

Basic Russian by Fayer

ISBN 9780844242002

 

and

Russian in Exercises by Khavronina

ISBN 9785883371553

(I have not seen the book, but read a stellar review.)

 

I am not sure how well either works for self-study without an instructor.

[PeterPan]

Just a bit of advice. Your pronunciation is going to be terrible no matter what, so focus on learning the grammar. I took 2 years in high school, nailed the text (which was of course a college text), and tested into the 3rd year summer program (level 5) at Indiana University. I assume it's as good now as it was then, don't know. I went in there directly out of high school and had no problem. There we had linguistics and conversation classes that smoothed out the speech problem. The issue with Russian is largely grammar, so that's where you should put your efforts.

 

When I studied, my approach was to repeat exercises over and over aloud till I had them memorized. (Ignore pronunciation.) You can make dictionaries in your notebook with all the words and make charts with all the grammar. Review them multiple times daily. I did it all before bed, so my brain could mull on it overnight. Definitely make charts for the grammar. Make and remake them, add to them, reorganize them, till the info makes sense and becomes automatic. Chant the endings like monks, just like you presumably did with latin.

 

In latin there's kind of a standard order cases are taught in, but in my russian classes the charts pretty much varied with the instructor. That's why you should make and remake charts till you really understand them and can do it in your sleep. Some will make charts using the question words (interrogative pronouns). Some will label with cases. Some will make their charts vertically and others horizontally.

 

You know I'll bet there are charts and youtube videos now for working on pronunciation. See if there are any sites that show the charts with where the tongue is for the hard and soft, blah blah, ie. the lingiustics of it. It's amazing what you can find now. When I was doing some ESL tutoring, I found terrific minimal pairs exercises, videos on forming letters, etc. So you can probably find something like that for Russian.

[TXMary2]

My son used Step by Step Russian the first year and now he uses www.livemocha.com - it is free and he gets feedback on his pronounciation from native Russian speakers.