Learn Russian Now! 8.0

At the heart of the program is a group of four increasingly advanced sections--Fundamental Russian, Getting Around Russia, Survival Phrases for Russian and St Petersburg: A Window on Europe--each of which includes several diverse sub-elements. Getting Around Russia, for example, features a circa-1980s mini-movie chronicling the misadventures of an American businessman trying his best to adapt to the country and the language. The video quality is grainy and the audio portion marred by a mid-frequency hiss, but the tale is both funny and instructive.

After watching the movie, students are encouraged to access various exercises, including word and sentence pronunciation drills, online quizzes and edutainment games such as crossword puzzles and word scrambles. The program also offers numerous visual and practical aids, including a nifty waveform display that compares the pupil's version of a particular word or syllable with that of the original Russian-speaking instructor. Unlike a virtual school, Learn Russian Now! does not chart overall progress or grades, yet many of its elements feature high-score tallies and visual indicators based upon aptitude and performance.

The program isn't structured in a linier fashion and therefore may frustrate those who like to follow a set path, but for those ready to speak and recognise the characters, words and common phraseology of the Russian language, Learn Russian Now! 8.0 is a fine educational enhancement. --Gordon Goble

What I hate about it: it crashes much too often (on my Danish version of Win98, 2nd ed), it doesn't really make it easy for me to monitor my progress or know where to start, it feels like a product that was rushed through the final phases of production, the help system sucks (the sentence "soon you'll accomplish you're goals" in a language course(!) demonstrates one of the problems), a million things really.

What I love about it: spending time working with this is actually fun and the fact that you can listen to the pronunciation of sentences and individual words, look up words and move back and forth by clicking with your mouse (or using the keyboard if you learn the shortcuts) makes this much more enjoyable than an audio CD or cassette based course.

With the above reservations, I recommend it as a supplement to a more traditional course, eg. "The New Penguin Russian Course For Beginners" and would definitely give it 4 stars if it would just crash a bit less frequently!


Every silver lining has a cloud!   January 3, 2002
Chris (Moenchengladbach, Germany)
22 out of 22 found this review helpful

The first, and by far the most unpleasant, shock related to purchasing this product is that what you see is not necessarily what you get. Depending on your supplier (and it must be stressed that Amazon are not guilty of this) you may be enticed into purchasing this title as a '3 CD Box Set'. Don't be fooled! This set consists of only two CD's of which just one is dedicated to learning the Russian language through interactive means. The other CD provides grammar-support software and a Russian typing programme which, whilst useful, are unlikely to be the main reason that any prospective customer would part with their hard earned cash.
As for the ONE interactive learning CD, this has both favourable and less favourable aspects. Having installed the CD the user is offered the choice of two teaching methods: either the 'Total Immersion' technique or the 'Step-by-Step' approach. Despite repeatedly referring to the Help File I was unable to find any difference between the two. The method(s) are based on a story line in which the main characters are intially introduced and subsequently followed through a series of day-to-day scenarios with new words and grammar being introduced prior to each of the ten sections. On the plus side is the interactive nature of the teaching process. It is possible to listen to operator-selected words or phrases spoken by a native Russian linguist, easily create your own Words List for those words or phrases that just won't stick (which unfortunately for me is the majority!) or accurately and clearly compare your own pronunciation of words/phrases with that of a native. Less positively, these excellent facilities would benefit greatly from a more user-friendly presentation style and a significantly improved Help File (which in itself dates from the ZX-81 era and is not what one would expect from a piece of modern interactive software).
In summary this CD may best be considered as a useful tool for reinforcing lessons learned by other means. It is definitely NOT a course for complete beginners as it lacks any introduction to the Cyrillic alphabet or Russian pronunciation. As a stand-alone CD I would have awarded it a cautious 3 stars however, in view of the fact that the purchaser effectively gains only one truly useful CD for.. a princely sum, the poor value for money demotes this course still further. A rather paltry 2 stars awarded - could do better!