Uzbek: An Elementary Textbook

Good product

This book is perfect for someone with no prior knowledge of Uzbek. The organization of the book and the multimedia activities on the enclosed CD ate both fun and helpful. I strongly recommend this book. There are just two things I wish were different. First, I hope future editions have MP3 files instead of a CD as only my office computer can play CDs. Second, their should be more care taken in editing. There are a few errors that would be easy to fix . (eg: The table at the top of page 86 has a mistake in one of the examples)

Basically the only good textbook for all those UZ students out there. Comes with a CD which in some cases is bout usable.

I'm a pretty good student, and I'm a pretty good teacher, but I have a hard time teaching myself. But despite my shortcomings, the book has plenty of its own. I was hoping this book could help me to communicate with my husband's family but so far I'm still a little at a loss.Like many elementary language books, the lessons are structured more around conversation than on grammar. This leaves the learner at a disadvantage when entering real life situations. There is opportunity to practice grammar but it works best in a classroom setting. As an individual trying to teach herself, it's not a great help. Also, the grammar does not build on itself as well as I've seen in other language books. Conversations are introduced with grammar structures that aren't explained until two, three, or even four chapters later.There are also a handful of editing errors in the book that can frustrate the reader. For example, in the picture that is supposed to be a visual aid for "write," the girl isn't even holding a pencil!The supplementary CD is helpful for vocabulary review but the recorded conversations are of no help to an absolute beginner. In some videos you can't even hear dialogue due to background noise or everyone talking at the same time. While this is said to help the learner get used to "natural speech," it does a learner no good when she can't hear what is being said! Conversations NEED to be enunciated and slowed down for beginners.In conclusion, it has some issues I think need to be address even for use in a classroom setting but seems like it would still be moderately effective there. On your own however, you will need to be seriously dedicated (and maybe have a conversation partner available for practice) to learn on your own from this.

The CD would have been very helpful in learning pronunciation. It does not work in any device I tried.

I know you reading it. It’s actually a good one

For those interested in Turkic languages, this book is a must-have. It explains Uzbek grammar in a way that terminology is kept at a minimum while vocabulary sections abound. That is a great way of building a textbook, I think. Since it doesn't assume that the reader has any previous knowledge on Uzbekistan, it deals with all the basics and takes you progressively into more advanced material. Along with Tajik (same series), the visual aids make the book enjoyable to read. I wish this collection of books included Armenian, Azeri and Kyrgyz.. maybe someone is working on that already.Thumbs up!P.s. Geogetown: seriously, for less comonly taught languages, this collection would improve a lot if there were similar books for all Turkic languages.

I was so very happy to be able to find this book. Uzbek is not easy to learn since there are not many good sources for language learning. It also has a disc which unfortunately my computer will not share the sound track with me yet. I have to fix it. Because I am planning a trip to Uzbekistan in the near future, it is great to be able to work on the language now.