Pimsleur Russian Review

I tried Pimsleur's elementary Russian language cd a few years ago as part of my independent efforts to learn Russian. Overall, I did not like the program very much because I felt that I was not learning the most useful forms of speech.

Pimsleur may work well in other languages, but it seemed ill-suited to the Russian language: the audio reinforced one form of a word, but because Russian is an inflected language, each noun can have 6 forms. Verbs have 6 conjugations, and yet Pimsleur emphasized the infinitive form, which you use the least of all!

It did seem very good for pronunciation though--it broke the words into the most basic sounds, so you could learn what it really should sound like.

I did not continue use of the product long enough to gain a lot of knowledge from it, so I cannot say whether I would have been able to put any of it into practice.

Pimsleur sets can be quite costly, so I would recommend that a person interested in learning a language invest in a class (if possible) rather than these CDs.

However, if you want to practice at home, the Pimsleur set might make a good complement to the class, if your teacher does not feel that it would interfere with your classroom curriculum. The set is particularly advisable for those who do not have exposure to conversation with a native speaker.

Still, based on my experience, I would not recommend the program as the foundation to a self-study curriculum.