Russian textbooks of the "teach yourself" variety - suggestions?

[Emily Saunders]

At the risk of showing my "low-brow" tastes, I have gotten a lot of use  
out of the British "Teach Yourself" series.  I taught an evening  
Community Ed Russian course at a local community college for several  
years using one of the Russian textbooks in this series.  I will tell  
you that it has problems with footnoting new vocabulary (or even  
including them in the dictionary at the end) and some of the grammar  
explanations are subpar, but the textbook did fulfill a few of the  
categories I was looking for for this type of class:  1)  it came with  
tapes (now CD's) included in the price, 2) there were answers in the  
back, 3) language was pertinent to an adult student with plans to visit  
Russia and get around (as opposed to your average college student  
talking about campus life) , 4) there were useful dialogs and a lot of  
realia used in the exercises, 5)  it contained a lot of cultural  
information that was relatively up-to-date, and 6) it was cheap $20-$30  
for the full package including audio.  My anticipation for this group  
of students is that they would attend classes at the community college  
for maybe 1-2 quarters and then either give it up or head to Russia, or  
continue on their own or...  This book is small enough to slip into a  
suitcase as a reference book and a student studying on their own could  
use it independently for quite awhile.

There are two beginning Russian textbooks in the Teach Yourself series,  
your student will probably want the one written by Daphne West as this  
essentially covers all of the grammar usually covered in a first-year  
college course.  The other book entitled "Beginners Teach Yourself  
Russian" stops short of the genitive case.  Any students using this  
series will want to invest in a good Russian-English//English-Russian  
dictionary and it might be a good idea to get a general grammar  
reference book as back-up for some of the explanations.  But the  
exercises generally get students through things well.

Alternatively, I have also looked a bit at the Colloquial Russian  
textbook and it is a bit "rougher" than the Teach Yourself Series --  
ie. it moves faster through the material and students would need to  
have a good head on them to "keep up."  But at first blush it seemed  
decent as well.

And for what it is worth, I have enjoyed dabbling in a variety of  
languages using both the Teach Yourself and Colloquial series:  Farsi,  
Mongolian, Hungarian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean...  (didn't get too far  
in any of them except maybe the Turkish and Mongolian) and found most  
of them to be relatively useful for the student who can't get to a  
class.

Hope this helps!

Emily Saunders
Olympia, WA

On Mar 13, 2006, at 11:59 AM, Nicole Monnier wrote:

> Dear SEELANGStsy,
>
> I've had a request (I should say, yet another request!) to recommend a  
> good
> beginning Russian textbook of the "teach yourself" variety. My usual
> response (to talk the student into a college Russian course, and  
> preferably
> mine!) is not appropriate this time, which thus leaves me at a loss -  
> I know
> almost nothing about the genre (except that I knee-jerkedly scorn it  
> when I
> walk by the language section of Barnes and Noble).
>
> I am highly interested to hear the opinions of those of you who DO know
> something about the genre.
>
> Best,
>
> Nicole
>
>
> ****************************
> Dr. Nicole Monnier
> Assistant Professor of Instruction
> Director of Undergraduate Studies (Russian)
> German & Russian Studies
> 415 GCB
> University of Missouri
> Columbia, MO 65211
>
> phone: 573.882.3370
>
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