An ideal introduction to the language and culture of Russia, Russian Language and People is an integrated multi-media course for beginners. As well as teaching you to communicate in and understand Russian, this course provides an accessible introduction to the written language. There are also plenty of fascinating insights into modern Russia and traditional customs.Whether learning at home or in a class, Russian Language and People can help you to reach the equivalent level of a first qualification, such as GCSE.

Course Book

• Fully revised third edition includes up-to-date cultural information about life in Russia
• Introduces useful new language in a relevant context
• Entertaining and informal approach makes learning enjoyable

192-page course book

An ideal introduction to the language and culture of Russia, Russian Language and People is an integrated multi-media course for beginners. As well as teaching you to communicate in and understand Russian, this course provides an accessible introduction to the written language. There are also plenty of fascinating insights into modern Russia and traditional customs.Whether learning at home or in a class, Russian Language and People can help you to reach the equivalent level of a first qualification, such as GCSE. Course Book*Fully revised third edition includes up-to-date cultural information about life in Russia *Introduces useful new language in a relevant context *Entertaining and informal approach makes learning enjoyable 192-page course book

2007-11-21 good book for beginners

I am a professional teacher and a native Russian speaker and I am trying to teach my fiancée Russian, and he is not a very hard-working student and definitely not a language person. I must admit this book is great - the most successful so far.
It is an easy to follow book. It consists of units short enough to cover during 1.5-2 hours class each. Each Unit introduces new words, gives a couple of dialogues to read and understand, explain the basic Grammar used in the dialogues and drill the new material with a few exercises. It is accompanied by 2 cd-s, which should be bought separately. The CDs are a must if you want to use this book: you won't be able to check yourself or listen to dialogues without them.
It is perfect for self-studying and can be used as an additional material in class.

+++ *A good introduction into the Cyrillic alphabet,
*A good selection of words: lots of similar to English words in the beginning and then more and more different from English words as the book progresses
*I especially loved dialogues and situation to remember sections, it makes a student create dialogues and basically speak starting from the first unit
*Good explanations of the basic Russian grammar and semantic features for beginners: clear to follow rules but not too much theory

--- The only questionable features of the book I find are the following:
*word quizzes and crosswords that I as a teacher personally don't like, but other people may enjoy
*some words seem unnecessary for beginners. But then again, usually it's either the words that are very similar to English words and the i suppose the idea is that it shows how easy it is to recognize these Russian words even without knowing them (and as a Russian speaker I should admit there are loads of borrowed words in Russian and they are usually from science or business language). Or it's the words that are very important for Russian culture and you will definitely turn any Russian man from a grimy character of a movie about Mafia into laughing friend by telling him the names of a couple of Russian football and hockey clubs that the book will teach you.


Needless to say, this book can always used in the combination with at least one more. I think it is always a good idea to use at least a couple of course books for language studies.