Complete Russian with Two Audio CDs: A Teach Yourself Guide (TY: Language Guides) 5th Edition

I bought this book and have been working my way thru it. The content is excellent. And both of my disks work fine so I am not sure what the other reviewers were referring to. I would not recommend using Complete Russian as a first book as it is fairly advanced which is hard to avoid when teaching Russian grammar as it is a tough subject. I am using this course after having used Rosetta Stone (levels 1-5), Pimsleur(levels 1-3),Michel Thomas (Total and Perfect) and the Everything Russian course and it is still not a breeze. None of these courses (or any other) will make someone fluent in my opinion. It takes massive and repeated exposure over time to the language to achieve fluency and any of these language courses are just a starting point.Complete Russian course does an excellent job of describing Russian grammar and the recordings are extremely useful. I am working thru as many courses as I can get my hands on, especially courses with recordings, as it provides more exposure to the language. Each course makes the next one easier of course but every course provides different sentences. After the previous courses that I went thru, I recognized probably well 70% of the words, but the dialogs in this book were quite different from the other course, even with the same words. I definitely feel this course has improved my Russian comprehension immensely. The course deliberately has only partial translations, but there is a reason. Once a word has been introduced it is not described again. This is actually a well thought out strategy as I am constantly referring back to previous dialogs to find the definitions. There are many, many useful phrases in this book that are regularly used in common Russian speech. My wife speaks Russian, and I now recognize many of the phrases from this book when I hear Russians speaking. Examples include simple Russian expressions like "In my opinion" and "What a shame". I had not heard either before in any other courses but they are scattered throughout this course in several dialogs so you begin to recognize them. I found this to be kind of exciting. After this book, I have begun to recognize quite a bit more actual Russian speech than before. The more of these fragments that are understood without thinking (like hello, good bye, how are you, etc.) the better as it makes understanding the language much easier. This is an outstanding course.

I ordered this book and received an even newer edition book(2014 edition) than the one shown here and the audio CDs I received belong to the book edition shown here. I finally got squared away with the latest edition audio CDs from 2014 and it now matches my book perfectly. The seller went to great lengths to acquire this audio CD from England.The book (newest edition) does have a few errors such as typos, but I still enjoy it. I particularly enjoy the reading and writing exercises of the book because this is my weakest area.The book teaches vocabulary and grammar at every lesson and this knowledge steadily builds upon itself. It breaks down the mystery of Russian grammar bit by bit. I can finally make sense of this language with each lesson. Each lesson makes me work by asking me to identify things in illustrations, write and say things aloud, which is good practice. Each lesson also has dialogues I can follow along to which are read by native speakers on the audio CD. This book alone won't get you to a native speaking level, but you will learn some useful and interesting words with each lesson.I practice with native Russian speakers and they enjoy reading the dialogues which sometimes teach about famous Russian landmarks, interesting cultural things and life in Russia.I have gone through all three levels of Pimsleur Russian and have practiced with native speakers for a while now. This book is a good transition for me to build more knowledge so I understand and agree with one of the reviewers who said this is not a good course for a very beginner of the Russian language. There is value in this book for those who are breaking through the beginner level and progressing to an intermediate level of Russian.

I've been learning Russian for a few months now. My primary tools are a Pimsleur audio course, the book "Russian for Beginners" by Duff and Makaroff, and this set, "Complete Russian"."Complete Russian" is a study course that comes in a large clamshell case with one fat book and two audio CDs. I must admit, this is the 'candy' of the three courses I'm presently using: I find it the most engaging and actually look forward to my nightly sessions before bed, as if the study sessions are treats. (Pimsleur, while quite helpful, gives my mind such a workout that lately I've been wanting the lessons to be over when they're only halfway complete!) I like how clearly the native speakers converse in the Dialogue sections (the Pimsleur voices, by comparison, can sound indistinct sometimes), and the oh-so-subtle sound effects in the background really bring the various scenarios to life. I'm keeping a notebook with the book for the writing exercises and am pleased at how quickly I'm picking up the Russian script. Although I don't know how well I'd do if this was my ONLY form of study, I'm enjoying Daphne West's "Complete Russian" immensely and wish she had more material from which I could learn about the Russian language and culture.

A good book and CD combination. Very interactive and enjoyable to read. Its set up well so its not to overwhelming

In my view this is an update of Teach Yourself Russian by Daphne West first published in 1995 (I think). However the content has been improved considerably and I prefer to use this current version for revision. I would strongly recommend this book to beginners.

Excellent.I a highly delighted.

I have had this book for a few days, so not a complete review, just an observation. To progress in this book you first need to learn the 33 lower case and 30 upper case russian characters before you can get started. This in my view is not a natural way to start learning a language (I speak 3 others fluently, and others not so well, and never started with an alphabet). I am hoping that after I have learnt the cyrillic characters, the rest of the book lives up to it's cover.