Laura O.

Interesting stories

Reviewed: 01-31-21

I like the content of the stories themselves and I also like how they aren't translated into English. There's a summary in English but not a translation of the entire text. I think that's a good way to test yourself and see if you really understood what you read.

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Conversational Russian

Reviewed: 12-31-20

I thought this was very useful. A lot of the phrases were everyday expressions that I've wondered about translating myself, so I appreciate having this book available. I will admit that I ended up skipping the English translations on the audiobook but I found value in the written translations in the PDF, where I could stop and compare the dialogues.

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Helpful

Reviewed: 11-18-20

I found this audiobook and its accompanying PDF helpful. Some of the sentences surprised me because they weren't your typical textbook examples. They were concise and covered a wide range of topics: history, science, job-related activities, parenting duties, and some even seemed a little philosophical. They weren't choppy, boring and awkward like the way textbook or dictionary examples can sometimes be, where it always feels like some piece of the conversation is missing (in my experiences).

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4 people found this helpful

Good resource

Reviewed: 10-31-20

I communicate regularly with people who speak Russian and since I have minimal knowledge of the language, this book is a nice reference to have on hand. They're everyday, common phrases that are very useful. I like that the pronunciation guide listed under each phrase shows you where the stress is on each word (where necessary) too. That's extremely helpful!

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Helped with vocabulary, reading & listening skills

Reviewed: 09-11-20

As someone who was completely new to Russian, with absolutely zero Russian vocabulary when I first discovered this book, I found it to be quite a challenge at first. However, Russian Short Stories for Beginners is a good vocabulary builder and a worthy addition to a Russian-learning toolkit.

I originally purchased the physical book but the audiobook helped me a lot. I like that it comes with a transcript too, so if I don’t have my book with me I can still follow along. When learning languages, I seem to struggle the most with listening and associating sounds with the words I'm looking at, but these stories are simple enough that I can read along easily and match what I'm hearing to what I'm seeing. It's a fun way to improve my confidence with both reading and listening. And, as a personal anecdote: I befriended a native Russian speaker who is learning English and knows little more English than I do Russian, and this book has helped me converse a little bit with him already.

Content-wise, considering these are beginner-level short stories, I thought they were interesting enough and sometimes found myself wishing they were longer (but then they wouldn't be short stories, I suppose).

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2 people found this helpful