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Speak Russian For BeginnersThe Michel Thomas Method (8-CD Beginner's Program) (The Michel Thomas Method) | 
 enlarge | Author: Natasha Bershadski
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Category: Book
List Price: $79.95
Buy New: $42.60
You Save: $37.35 (47%)
New (19) Used (7) from $42.54
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 152909
Media: Audio CD
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 8
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 7.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 0071547479
Dewey Decimal Number: 491
EAN: 9780071547475
ASIN: 0071547479
Publication Date: March 26, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
More than 1 million Michel Thomas programs sold worldwide!
Learn Russian--no passport required! No books. No writing. No drills. And nothing to memorize--ever! You will go from the basics to proficiency in no time with this complete course. Includes eight 60-minute audio CDs.
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| Customer Reviews:
 You will remember what you learned September 30, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Good points:
1. The pronunciation is slow and clear.
2. Lots of varied reinforcement is given to help you remember. It's hard to forget what you learned!
3. It's fun!
4. Doesn't contain repetitive drills. The material progresses at a nice rate.
5. Some basic grammar is covered. You will get a good feel for guessing whether a noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter.
6. Some longer sentences are taught e.g. "I wonder if it's possible to buy tickets here?"
Bad points:
1. The vocabulary is very small. You won't learn how to say "hello" or "goodbye", nor will you learn numbers (so you can't tell the time). You won't learn adjectives, although some adverbs are taught.
2. The vocabulary is spotty. I think the vocab which is relatively easy to remember (based on English words) has been chosen rather than systematically learning normal basic vocab. For example, you'll learn I/me/my, you, we/us, but you won't learn his or her.
3. The accusative case isn't explained (it's explained in the Advanced course). Instead the nouns used as direct objects (apart from "me", "us", "you") are either inanimate masculine, neuter, or plural, so no noun ending changes are required. This isn't pointed out to the listener.
4. Indeclinable nouns aren't pointed out and the gender of nouns ending in the soft sign are not treated. The listener is likely to think that all nouns can easily be classified as either masculine, feminine, or neuter.
5. The teacher points out pronunciation mistakes but just listening to the CDs won't explain how to form the sounds correctly. You might therefore learn an incorrect way to pronounce the sounds. The teacher seems to have difficulty getting the students to pronounce soft sounds (if you have this difficulty try smiling when you pronounce them to force your tongue higher in your mouth).
6. No transcripts are included so you can't become good at reading Russian easily. An English-Russian/Russian-English dictionary would be a good idea to see how the words are spelled and to check your pronunciation.
Overall, it's quite a remarkable product, enabling you to rapidly learn some very basic Russian (thanks to the Thomas Michel method). There's no way you'd be able to travel to Russia and get along okay after completing this course so you'll definitely need to continue to the Advanced course after this.
Finishing this course can make it easier to start the Pimsleur Russian course.
 Michel Thomas Rules July 5, 2008
Michel Thomas works like he says he does and it works very well.
When I bought these cd's I had already worked on a couple beginners books, one was from Berlitz (which was pretty good). Oh, and I did Rosetta Stone for a while. Actually, I like Michel Thomas' method just as much as Rosetta Stone. They're two different methods but I think they're equally good. Plus with Michel Thomas, you can do it in your car.
Thomas says you should just be able to throw the cd in and get going, but I would recommend checking out a beginners book first just to get your bearings on the language and the alphabet.
Bottom line though, it's one of the best language learning systems out there. It's in the top 2.
I mean Rosetta Stone is great, but it didn't really teach grammar. It just immerses you in the language so you're forced to figure it out. (That includes spelling too, which in Russian is no small feat.) There's no one to tell you that you can put certain words pretty much anywhere you want in the sentence. Michel Thomas has two students sitting there asking the teacher pretty much every question you'd be asking if you were there.
Thanks to Michel Thomas and a little concentration on my part, ya magoo gavareet pa-russki ochyen harasho.
Great for starters! June 24, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Great product! Great for beginners. Although I have been teaching myself Russian already for 5 months (Books and Pimsleur) this was still very helpful. It was more of a review for me really but compared this to Pimsleur it moves a lot faster! I have used other Michel Thomas products (French, German, and Italian) and they are all great, this one is no exception.
Towards the end of the course you learn the Russian alphabet and the sounds each letter makes (33 total letters), which I believe is very good to know since for me it was easier to picture how a word is pronounced with the knowledge of the alphabet.
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