Product Description: Available in a 2-volume format, Nachalo is the most exciting text available for beginning Russian courses. Written by a respected team of Russian scholars and linguists, Nachalo presents grammar functionally and teaches students the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing within the context of a wealth of cultural information. The abundant practice material in Nachalo ranges from focused and controlled to open-ended and communicative. Nachalo features an on-going story set in Russia with a cast of Russian and American characters, exposing students to new vocabulary and structures in authentic situations. Most exciting of all, Nachalo includes the most extensive package of support materials for any beginning Russian text on the market, including a video tied specifically to the text, shot on location in Moscow. The Second Edition is even more powerful with a text-specific Website and an all new student CD-ROM.
Soooo frustrating. I imagine that this book was once a clever, cohesive text. It was smartly combined with audio materials and a marginally competent artist. Then a large storm/animal crashed through the writers' office the night before the final copy was due. The authors threw together whatever pages they could find without severe damage in the morning and called it a wrap. And then they gave it a worthless index.
The result? You're up at one in the morning searching for an thorough explanation/examples of the instrumental case and you have to dig through 300+ pages to find it, closely inspecting each page because new cases are introduced at random points in the book (and on the top, middle and bottom of pages and in similar black text) and "instrumental" isn't in the index. Oh, "chess" is in the index, "backward buildup, principle of" is in the index. But case forms? Not so much.
I love languages (I'm a foreign languages major). I love learning languages.
This book does not help.
Simply terrible textbook I have been teaching Russian for 11 years and have had difficulty finding a good first-year textbook. Golosa left me wanting more, so I thought I'd try Nachalo. Big mistake. The dearth of logical, simple, and effective first-year Russian books is the main reason I am in the middle of writing my own first-year Russian text. This book is organized in a haphazard manner, the logic of which I have yet to discern. For example, some of the grammatical cases (genitive, accusative, etc.) are covered over 2-3 chapters - and not always consecutive chapters - and the information is given out piecemeal. This is frustrating for an experienced instructor and I know from my students' comments that it is even more confusing for them. Another problem is that this book is long on pictures and little cutsie-pie dialogues, but short on useful exercises. There are other problems as well, but the issues I outline here are enough to recommend to anyone considering this book to look elsewhere.
The worst foreign language book I have used Although I gather that this textbook is one of few Russian texts for English speakers to include extensive multimedia activities, and that is why it is often chosen, I would have dispensed with them to have a more organized text.
This book did not present grammar in an organized way-- a single case might be taught over three [not consecutive] chapters, and the adjective endings for two or three cases crammed into one. There were comparatively few grammar activities, and the vocabulary learned seemed dictated by the activities of the characters in each chapter, whether or not this vocabulary was generally useful.
In the second chapter, for example, much of the vocabulary is the names of instruments and musicians-- but we never learned body parts or colors. Telling time and the date came several chapters later; phrases that might be useful for traveling were spread out across the entire book or never encountered at all.
At the end of a year of Russian study with this book, I've retained almost nothing, and it isn't just me-- everyone who took the course with me felt that the text was confusing and placed emphasis on the wrong material. Although I had an hour of instruction in this language four days a week, it was still a struggle to use what I'd learned in any meaningful way, despite having learned two other languages and picked them up relatively quickly. Having used several other language texts at the same level as this one, in two other languages, this text is hands-down the worst.
Nachalo vs. Other russian study books My class has been using the Nachalo series for two years now, and have also tried other russian study books as supplimentary information. While some other books had better exercises, the Nachalo series had much better discriptions and much more vocabulary. overall, we came to the conclusion that the Nachalo series is one of the best language learning series we have encountered.
I haven't failed Russian yet... I think this book is pretty good at teaching a student Russian, as long as the student has a fluent speaker teaching the material.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
