Golosa: A Basic Course in Russian, Book One - Learn Russian Language for Beginners | Textbook for Self-Study, Classroom & Travel

Apart from my native language of English, Russian is my 5th language, so I have some sense of what’s generally important and what’s often detrimental when it comes to language pedagogy. This book is genuinely an exemplar of What Not to Do.Among its failures, it:1. Is poorly organized. One example: You learn basic pronunciation rules 200 pages in. Another example: cases are not taught sequentially and are sometimes taught piecemeal. You won’t learn the genitive case, for instance, but rather the genitive singular; then later, the genitive plural; then later, the dative singular, but for pronouns only.Here’s what’s crazy: Russian case declensions actually follow a very elegant, intuitive pattern if students are regarded as being intelligent enough to learn them holistically and in a given format: Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Prepositional, Instrumental. (If you learn them this way, you will also be able to discern why certain grammatical rules—for instance, the rule that quantities greater than 3 take the genitive plural and those below 3 take the genitive singular—make sense in relation to other patterns—for instance, the pattern that in nearly all instances, the genitive singular is the same as the nominative plural.)But you will never be taught any of this. This book thinks you are too stupid to do anything other than memorize phrases, rather than learn concepts; so you are never even taught that any patterns exist. The result is that you come away thinking that Russian is incredibly chaotic and that you will forever depend on the assistance of this textbook series to get by (which may be the idea).Oh, and I forgot to mention: The book never actually refers to declensions as “declensions”. What it does is, for each case, provide an incomplete table of how some nouns can end (occasionally using vague language like “soft sound,” which it does not take the trouble to explain); and then give a series of scattered rules about how certain nouns with certain endings end in that particular case or fraction of a case, without then fitting that set of endings into the overall declensional pattern. To top it off, you will then be told that this case operates differently in certain situations, but that you aren’t going to learn that rule yet. In effect, you don’t even learn what you learn.There is no need to teach Russian grammar this way. It is far simpler and much more rewarding when you do it differently. Then, students truly master the language and feel a sense of empowerment, rather than a wave of relief that they made it through a sentence and it probably went okay.2. Lacks proper syntax instruction. Example: When telling time in Russian, you literally say “Now is/are ___ hours”. Rather than explain this so that you can understand how various components of a phrase operate and change contextually, as well as see, delightedly, how cases work in vivo, you are told that the word for “hours” means “o’clock”. Yes, you read that correctly. The book then goes on to explain that “sometimes, [word for ‘hours’] means ‘hours’”. More accurate, however, is that the word for “hours” can be used to denote what is in English called a “clock” or a “watch”. Never does it mean “o’clock”. I repeat: This book thinks your brain is too stupid and lazy to do anything other than memorize words and phrases. In other words, it thinks you are too stupid and lazy to learn. It never intends for you to master Russian.3. Abides by an absolutely backwards pedagogical philosophy. I’ve touched on this above, but to be more concrete: If your first language is not a case-heavy language, as English is not; and especially if you have learned a non-native language before: You. Must. Learn. The. Grammar. First. Master the grammar. You will learn vocabulary by default this way; you will spot patterns; you will intuitively discern stems and their properties; you will independently identify roots. You will feel triumphant. This will be *your* language. You will feel as though you are unlocking hidden gateways. Etc.If you are thrown vocabulary first, by contrast, at the *ends* of chapters punctuated by haphazard and half-complete case tables, you will not actually learn vocabulary at all. You will not know whether the word you are seeing is in its genitive, accusative, or instrumental form. On the other hand, if you learn grammar first, even if you don’t know what a word means, you will immediately be able to spot its stem, recognize how it declines in all cases, and perhaps identify its root. These skills are the greatest obstacles for non-case-language students of Russian; and if you do not master them first, you will master nothing later. You will not know the nominative form of the noun or adjective, nor its relationship to the verb, nor the mechanics of what is truly a beautiful and far simpler grammar than English (if you are allowed to learn it, which this book does not permit you to do). You will come away feeling defeated; and you will be convinced that Russian is too difficult a language.Languages are not so much “hard” as they are taught badly. At best, this book does not teach Russian well.