Free Kindle Stories From Today's Russia ebooks Download
Advanced Beginning through Intermediate Intermediate students of Russian will connect with these contemporary stories created especially for them. Written by three contemporary Russian-language authors, the tales reflect aspects of the lives of Russians today.
Series: Language - Russian
Paperback: 80 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education; 1 edition (January 11, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0844242527
ISBN-13: 978-0844242521
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.2 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #1,564,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #88 in Books > Children's Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Language Learning > Russian #598 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Regional & Cultural > Russian #1371 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Literature > World Literature > European
There are three novelettes here. The first is about a German who comes to stay with her teenage Petersburg penfriend, the second about a pet Polar Bear and the last about a shipwrecked boy.The text is up-to-date and not patronising with the minimum of footnotes.Critically speaking the stories are genuinely weird especially the true one about a polar bear who thinks he's human and who lives in a tower block. Apparently it was also made into a documentary.If you can't find a suitable reader, then this will suffice and should take you a couple of weeks to progress through. However the varied language used shows you how Russian verbs are used in context, and thus the book will last you a long time as a grammar reference. There are also short annotated Russian stories for learners in the weekly English version of 'Moscow Today'. Check this out too.
I have found very few books geared for English speakers at the intermediate level, so if you fall into the same category, get this book! The stories are engaging, and there are a lot of words to learn and lots more to relearn.English translations for many words and some phrases are included along the bottom of each page. The only thing I found odd was that some very difficult words were not translated, yet some of the easier ones were. But even if it had no translations at all, I would still recommend it.One more thing: If you find the first story to be difficult to read, start with the second story and move on to the third - I found them to be much less difficult.
After studying Russian for a few months I wanted to try reading something. At first I was seriously over-ambitious and struggled to read a paragraph of Pushkin, looking up every word. I decided Stories from Today's Russia might be more suitable. I initially found the text to be quite difficult; there were a good number of words I didn't know, but as I continued reading I began to find I could read more quickly, making less and less use of my dictionary. These stories are ideal for someone with a reasonable vocabulary and a fair knowledge of the basic rules of Russian grammar. They are neither so easy that there is no challenge at all, nor so hard that they become tedious. It helps that the stories themselves are quite interesting and varied. There are a good number of pictures and maps and some short exercises. I found this book really useful not only because I learned a good number of new words and improved my understanding of some grammar points, but also because in the end I began to really enjoy reading Russian. Maybe one day I will be ready for Pushkin.
As a native speaker of Russian, I thought the book was nothing else, but an insult. Good stories. Would be interesting to read for learners of Russian. They could even benefit from it in terms of grammar, spelling and punctuation if...it didn't have a great deal of typos and mistakes. As if it was not proofread for spelling, grammar or punctuation at all. Would I recommend it for my students? No! Good-looking cover and the pictures, but the way the stories are put onto the paper - it's just a shame. I wouldn't complain, if I got it for free, but spending $10 on it was a waste.
As an intermediate student of the Russian language (I have been studying it mostly on my own for a few years) I found the stories in this book interesting and very readable. Most of the words unfamiliar to me had footnotes and many of the few that didn't I was able to guess from the context.The thing that bothered me and kept me from giving this a higher rating was the abundance of typographical errors. It seemed there was at least one per page. One is even in the title of one of the stories in the table of contents (the word for "bear" spelled with a "b" instead of a "v"). In most cases I was able to spot the errors for myself but sometimes I found myself wondering whether a word was unfamiliar or just misspelled. Also, in at least one instance the wrong translation was given for a word (it can be translated as "rudder" as an adjective, which was the meaning given, but in this case it was being used as a noun meaning "helmsman").
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