Always good to learn a language

If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

I find the presentation of this very unprofessional. I'm finding it difficult to get past the fake jollity. The first three hours of this is pointless, not so much for the information but the presentation style makes it almost unbearable. Could we have a more professional presentation style please, your listeners are not morons.

What was most disappointing about Innovative Language Learning’s story?

The presenters think they are teaching five year old children.

Would you be willing to try another one of Innovative Language Learning’s performances?

Yes if the production wasn't so moronic.

You didn’t love this book--but did it have any redeeming qualities?

It's always good to learn a language and seeking help anywhere is useful.

Any additional comments?

This is a competitive market, don’t lose your place in it by trying to palm people off with this.

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5 people found this helpful

If you are an unusually patient person...

The bad:
It is tiring that the man constantly says the woman's name.
He constantly praises her every time she has said something or is going to say something in Russian.
Like this: "excellent Oksana", "can you repeat that, Oksana", "again, Oksana", "so, Oksana",
"okaaay, can you read these numbers Oksana".
He is clearly American and seems impressed that a Russian speaks Russian perfectly ...
I hate that he speaks to the listeners and to her as if everyone is stupid or incomprehensible children.
He seems arrogant.
I have a hard time listening to him in some of the chapters,
he sounds like he is teaching English and it gets a little monotonous.

The good:
You learn a lot if you survive...
If you are an unusually patient person who is extremely dedicated to learning Russian,
then there are a few grains of gold in this material.
The woman has a good clear voice.
Her pronunciation and the dialogues are a great help to anyone who has just started in the Russian language.
All in all, it's good material to learn from.

Use it like this:
Do not print the PDF, which is over 400 pages.
Use a tablet or computer. Learn a little at a time, leaving bookmarks in both the PDF and the audiobook.
Work your way slowly through the material, use the pause button and repeat what is being said.
Combine with other materials,
Talk with a teacher / native at least twice a week.
There is a slow learning curve for Russian if you come from English, so it is common that you do not see progress in the beginning ..
Do not give up!
Russian is an exciting language and the Russians are friendly people with good humor :)

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1 person found this helpful

Very poor introduction to Russian.

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

A lot of the first half of the course is rubbish, with essentially no Russian being actually taught. Instead, the hosts just sort of talk about Russia. While it's obviously useful to get context and insight into the culture when learning a language, there's virtually no tying it to the actual language. When lessons do actually start properly, they do a very poor job of breaking down the language. Russian is very different to English, with lots of very lengthy words, which are just thrown at you with very little explanation, making it almost impossible to retain anything. By the time I gave up, I was around ten lessons into the "survival Russian" phase and felt like I'd retained no more knowledge than how to say hello.

Would you ever listen to anything by Innovative Language Learning again?

Possibly. I originally purchased this because I used Innovative's Japanese course when studying that language and found it to be pretty effective. It's entirely possible that some of their other language courses are as good as the Japanese, or as bad as this is.

What didn’t you like about RussianPod101.com’s performance?

The format of the lessons consists of a native Russian speaker (a Ukrainian woman who does a decent enough job all things considered) and a native English speaker. For the first couple of lessons this role is filled by an American, who does a decent enough job and sounds fairly natural, but he's soon replaced by an Englishman whose performance is terrible.

He's so stiff and unnatural that for the first few lessons he was there I had trouble discerning whether he was a real person or a text-to-speech program, it was only when a flub wasn't edited out that I realized it was an actual person. He speaks in monotone, in the kind of stilted delivery you get when you listen to a child recite lines they've learned for a school play, and it's impossible to concentrate and maintain focus when you have to listen to something like that. The content of the lessons might be perfectly fine, but I wouldn't know, because his delivery is impossible to pay attention to. His pronunciation of Russian also seems to be pretty poor, and often words sound totally different coming from him compared to the native speaker.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Learn Russian: Ultimate Getting Started with Russian Box Set, Lessons 1-55?

Most of the first half of the audiobook.

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5 people found this helpful

Good as an add-on but start somewhere else first

To any buyers: If you are starting from scratch I would advise a different book. This goes over the basics (eventually) but non-native instructors are used, which will really hinder the effectiveness of your pronunciation and listening skills. While basic vocab and phrases are covered, I would advise this be used as an add-on to an already existing knowledge of basic Russian, rather than rely on this as complete beginner.

To the authors: Replace the English instructor. His delivery in both English and Russian is awful and detracts from the lessons.

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2 people found this helpful

This was awful.

I've been learning Russian for a few months and wanted some audio to supplement what I was already doing. I've listened to 8ish hours of this nonsense. Mostly in the hopes that it would get better. It doesn't.

The information they provide isn't explained well, it's incoherent a lot of the time, very little pause between phrases and sections of the lesson. Itjust gets thrown at you haphazardly.

Then the icing on the cake was how awfully cringe the whole presentation was. This did not require 2 people presenting and the fake banter between them was truly awful to listen to. Woeful.

Don't waste your time with this like I did.

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great verbose Introduction to Russian

I feel I've gained quite a lot from this audio book and it has been a valuable supplement to my ongoing Russian studies

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Terrible

This is awful! The female narrator is good but the male narrator sounds robotic and for some reason is switched out twice with no explanation within the same lesson. Additionally, the ‘banter’ between the two of them is dire. I only managed to get to lesson 3 before I had to turn it off and purchase another audible book.

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Great for serious learners.

If you want to learn a few phrases, this is the wrong course. If you want to be fluent in 2 months, you're kidding yourself. If you have a realistic perspective of language learning, have learned the Cyrillic alphabet (not necessary but you'll save yourself a lot of trouble if you do) then the next step is this course.



The course has set a fantastic groundwork for you to build your language learning up on. This course isn't audio only and the accompanying PDF files are massive so I'd recommend you use this course with a tablet or be willing to print 600-odd pages.



Narrators are very casual to try and relax things, and the PDF document goes into the language and notes some points on grammar. It also aids in immersion.



I strongly recommend this course along with setting your facebook and phone to Russian (Русский(RU)) and use Oxford's Russian Dictionary (ISBN: 978-0-19-957643-2 available on Amazon) to aid in the immersion/language learning process.

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27 people found this helpful