I ordered this to accompany the Pimsleur Language Russian program, as Pimsleur, although very powerful for learning to speak, has little more than a pamphlet to teach you to read. So, I picked this up, and it is very handy. It has made the process of learning to read fairly easay and enjoyable.I would have rated this a 3, however, because you lose a LOT of the meat of the book if you don't have the audio recordings, which aren't included in the book. At least, they weren't with mine. However, I poked around online and found that they're available for download off this website:http://mllc.utsa.edu/troika/student/mp3.htmI don't know how long that site will be up, but if you intend to use this book to teach yourself to read and speak, those MP3s will be invaluable.