This book was the perfect way for me to learn Russian. Even though I had very little time available to devote to my Russian studies, I still made significant progress within just a few weeks. It carefully explained the very basics of the Russian language to me in a way that was easy to comprehend and simple to remember.

What I truly appreciate about this book is that it challenges you to try and comprehend the Russian text without too much English text on the page (which would distract from your primary goal of learning Russian). However, if you'd need any further explanation, an English version of the text is available in the back of the book.

But I couldn't speak about my success in learning Russian without mentioning the CDs. They were truly the one method that kept me refreshed and progressing forward in my studies. Every day on the way to school, I would listen to these oral exercises in my car, giving me a minimum of 20 minutes oral practice, while not impeding in other aspects of my life.

I like this book. And I just adore its format! It has so many cute pictures that make the learning process vivid and fun. The exercises are accompanied by audio that helps a lot. At the end of each lesson there is a special exercise, where you listen to a Russian speaker talking at a natural speed. It’s amazing, but actually you are able to recognize it, because you already know the words, and then you listen to them being pronounced naturally.

Each time you memorize letters and corresponding sounds just after finishing a set of exercises. Really good Workbook!

Russian self-study books are always very intimidating, but this book turned out to be really easy to follow by myself. I liked that the main course has no translations, but if you want them, it is still available at the back of the book.
You can load the sound and audio too - which is really cool and has a lot of different voices (women, men, I think I counted at least 5). I loaded the sound on the iPod and can listen to it on the go.
The grammar references at the end of the book are really straightforward. For the first time that I was going through the declinations of nouns and adjectives - it all made sense! Everything that was jumbled in my head from previous attempts to learn them has finally fallen into place.
Every chapter of the main course starts with a text and/or dialogue (it has accent marks, for the pronunciation and stress), and then a new structure or rule is introduced, and then exercises for grammar and vocabulary. After each 3 chapters there is a self-test, so you can see if you really understood everything.
I am very happy with the book and would recommend to anyone for self-study use, or working with a teacher. It's a great new approach to making learning Russian easy.

Russian Step By Step: Total Beginner

Anna