Short Stories in Russian for Beginners

The book is useful, yet there is an alarming amount of mistranslations in it. I'm Russian myself, my husband is learning Russian, as we were going through the book together, I found three mistranslations ( not typos!) in the vocabulary by the page 58. :-(And"Темный- brown" ( supposed to be коричневый)"Молодой человек- boy" ( supposed to be young man)This one is really bad.."Четвёртый этаж - third floor " ( and the reality is it is the Fourth floor 😳)Yep. Unless you have a Russian handy, this book might be slightly misleading in some areas.

I'm only a beginnery-beginner; I know only a few very basic words and phrases, and have begun listening to Russian recordings more to start getting a sense of the sounds and cadences and inflections of the language than with any hope of actually comprehending what I'm hearing. And yet, in these stories, those few words and phrases I know, and variations upon them, keep coming up, over and over; it's very heartening and encouraging even to understand what little I am understanding. It makes me want to understand more - and if such desires are not key to learning, I don't know what is.I consider this little audiobook one of the best investments I've made yet in my Russian language education. =)

While this is not a book for beginners, I was quite elated in that mostly I could read the various stories in one go. The book consists of rather different kind of stories. At the end of each story there is a synopsis, followed by multiple choice questions and some vocabulary. Most words are shown in such a way that you know where the stress is supposed to be, although I have to admit it is not very easy to see. At the end of the book there is still an alphabetical list of words and expressions and some words/expressions in the text are highlighted. In 1967 I took an intensive 3rd year summer course of Russian in Toronto, Canada. Of course, that was a long time ago. Since having a Kindle I have been reading bilingual fairy tales and other stories, some consisting of one paragraph in English followed by the paragraph in Russian. Some had longer stretches of text before the other language was shown, so for me this was the first time I could actually follow a whole story and then just check some of the vocabulary of which I might not have been quite sure. I also have to say that I am a linguist knowing several languages and Russian has actually a number of words adopted from other languages, just like with English and French.

Highly recommend this book for someone learning Russian. Each story increases a bit in difficulty. I recommend reading through a section once without looking at the words defined at the end of the section. As you read through, underline in pencil words you don't know. Then read through all the words they give definitions for (which is only a selection from the chapter). Then read through the chapter again, erasing underlined words you now recognize. When done, look up the words still underlined. I wrote those word's definitions in the book where the others are. Then read the chapter a third time. Yeah, it's tedious but very useful.

I jsut started reading the book in Kindle. The translation of difficult words is not consistent. Sometimes it is fast as a quicknote, sometimes one is taken to the full dictionary where the word is not always easy to find. If the word is not highlighted, one can right click, but it is often not found in the dictionary. So far disappointing. Good feature to have instant translation at the finger tips, but it does not work properly. The list of difficult words at the end of each chapter is helpful. This is an intermediate level book.

I have been studying Russian for about 2 years. Today, I finished reading this book. I really enjoyed it and thought that it was appropriately written for students. The sentence structures are not overly complicated so the reader can manage to read thru, so to speak, even when you may be uncertain of the exact meaning. Plus, the context always helps to figure out what you may not understand. The vocabulary of the book is excellent for students, and the authors repeat many of the verbs and other vocabulary in each story so as to reinforce them. Overall I thought it was an excellent book for students of russian language.

This book has helped my Russian quite a bit. In recent years the emphasis has been on active vocabulary in language learning. And Skype allows one to practice active vocabulary easily.But this book helped me create Russian sentences like a Russian. The problem with only speaking or writing in a new language, is you are just translating your own language. Frequently my Russian sentences were grammatically correct, but just sounded strange to my Russian friends. Read this book, don't look up every word. Just try to follow along. It will improve your Russian in a natural manner.I wish audio was available. And there is no dictionary (which I think is good). Important phrases are explained. It is not for an absolute beginner. And you must know the Cyrillic alphabet. Resist the urge to look up every word. resist the urge to look up which "case" each phrase is in.. just read a bit every night.. You will make rapid improvement.

Be warned!! All stories in these books are the exact same for every language. I bought three of these (French, Danish, and Russian) expecting a variety of stories, hopefully some culturally relevant/appropriate ones depending on the language, and a carefully catered approach based on each language's particular learning progression. But this is NOT the case. The stories between all three are identical (with some very minor changes for the sake of translation). Highly disappointed. This is extremely lazy, in my opinion. I guess If you only bought one, or you don't care about the repetition, it's fine.Amazon really needs to provide a book preview to avoid these kinds of situations.

It was an okay book, the stories are of a good level of difficulty, but lots of the words in bold, that were condensed at the end of each story with their meaning in English, were not included at the back. They had obviously been missed. Furthermore, there were multiple examples of the wrong case being used in Russian, which is not reassuring for those using it as a means to reinforce grammar rules. After a certain point, and so many errors, I stopped reading it.

The stories are more appropriate for someone who has some grasp of the language, rather than a beginner.For example, a beginner with no previous knowledge could not simply pick up this book and begin reading chapter 1, because to do that, you would need to have some knowledge of the alphabet and its sounds at the very least, and have some understanding of the language to be able to complete the comprehension tests at the end. So for me, I would need to arm myself with a dictionary to be able to get through the first chapter.In fact, the intro page vii states “high-beginner to low-intermediate” and I think the authors could have done better to express that on the cover, after all, there are classifications that can assist with thisIt sounds silly but there actually aren’t enough pictures in this book: a child learning to read would need more picture references. The writing could also do with being a bit bigger, as again, when children are learning to read, the text is often a bit bigger, even though the meaning is the same.Nicely presented, the accompanying audio does help, even if only to tell me that my attempts at speaking Russian were awful 😀I will keep trying 🤓

This a very effective way to learn. I have recently finished the book, and have absorbed vocabulary and correct grammatical forms in a natural way. I did not follow the author's advice about not translating unknown words - at first I tried this approach and I was frustrated and stopped reading. I then used my own approach, that works for me. I translated unknown words and worked through the entire text this way. This has been powerful.I am very grateful for this book.There are a few editing errors, but nothing that inhibits the stories or learning process. The stories are not boring and you learn naturally. It is fun!*Update* I ordered the new version as well, when it came out because it said there was a new story in it. There is, but one of the stories that's in the first one is missing, so it's not extra.That annoyed me because id worked hard to learn that particular story.It seems some of the language in the first one is incorrect (and this was pointed out to me when i used these words).The second version of this book is not sentence for sentence the same. In fact the sentences have been changed completely, some entirely left out and some new ones put in. At first. this eally annoyed me. I thought, since i had worked hard learning the first version, i should be able to now read this second version through... but no: it's not the same. However, of course this is a good opportunity to improve! Hopefully, it's error-free. I certainly hope so, i will be very glad.I found this book very, very useful. I learned from it, and it was enjoyable. I was aware of language errors and that did bother me. But i went along and did my best with it. I used it alongside a translation tool becauseit is quite a hard book for beginners. At the time, though, this was the only book like this for russian i could find. So i really appreciated it. It seems it was a first and others have appeared now.In their 'translations' at the end of the chapters, they provide a sentence in english that is not word for word what the russian sentence says. A lot of books do this and it's not helpful.

This is a really good book and I think more for those with a fair knowledge of Russian, particularly grammar. I've passed A level Russian and found it very good for building on what I've already learned. For beginners? I don't think so.

This book is appropriate for people with a certain knowlwdge of the language, (I would say low intermediate but certainly not beginners). You will learn many new words in a fun way instead of memorizing them like in a grammar. you will also learn a few colloquial expressions and their usage in certain contexts.