The New Penguin Russian Course: A Complete Course for Beginners (Penguin Handbooks)

It's easy to see from the reviews for this book that there are more than one type of language learner. If you want Russian spoon-fed to you, forget it and learn Italian, French, etc. Russian only becomes usable when you have all of the inflected endings organized and stored in your head. And the only way to accomplish that is by studying with some degree of passion.

I used this book along with the 3 pimsleur sets on russian and now have a very strong foundation to proceed into advanced studies. This book has a good mix of grammar and texts to translate. I never felt overwhelmed. That said, I progressed on a two-steps-forward and one-step-back basis. You will too if you want to learn Russian, so don't sweat it. It's normal. I was relieved when I got to chapter 10 or so and the book said something about "you have now met X number of words and have probably forgot most of them. That's ok. Just learn them again and it will get easier."

My one regret with the book: I wish there was a workbook for more exercises. The exercises in the book are good, but I had to make up my own to really become accomplished at slinging those endings the way I wanted.

Stay away from this book if you are looking for nice phrases for travelers. This book will teach you only if you put the right kind of effort into your studies.

I have dozens of books on Russian and this is the one that taught me what I needed to know.

This book has to be the worst grammar/language book I have ever read! This is coming from someone who has learned two other foreign languages.

This book is horrible. You don't even learn plural noun forms until a few chapters into the book. Then they make you wait until the chapter on the genitive case to find out the adjective forms for these plural nouns!

A lot of good this will do someone who wants to communicate with Russians right away.

Granted Russian is a tough language: there are 6 different cases to learn and lots of exceptions to rules. However, the way this book is laid out and organized only makes it harder!

I know because I have found a few web pages that teach Russian more effectively than this.

I think that this book, when accompanied by talking and consulting prople who speak Russian, can really get a serious student to speak and understand the language.
True, some of the words and grammer are in old fashioned Russian, but other than that -it is very easy to learn from, very deductive and well organized.

Forty years ago I studied Russian in college and used the unwieldy British- and Harvard-oriented texts of that time. After a few years I forgot it all. I recently decided to relearn the langauage and bought all the good texts I could find. This is the one I keep going back to. It's straightforward, easy to use, and well organized. It's made virtually every commuter rail trip with me in the past year while I work my way through at my own pace. I've amply annotated it and filled it with 3x5 post-it notes for the exercises. I still use it for the easy-to-find tables in the back. And throughout the appendices, vocabulary lists, and glossaries, lesson numbers are noted for most words and concepts. It's short on subordinating and adverbial conjunctions. The letter-writing section is short and a bit formal for casual writing. It gives good conversational information but it would be better with accompanying tapes. This is the book I took to Russia with me.

I picked up this book at the library on a whim, and was so quickly drawn in that I decided to purchase the living language course with CDs to be able to continue learning Russian on my own when the book was due. I found, though, that while the CDs are helpful for pronunciation and aural comprehension, the Penguin course has been most helpful overall. I plan to purchase it now, and highly recommend it for any beginning (self-taught) Russian student.