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Just want to understand what I hear - Rus

  Tags: Listening
 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center Post Reply
Evanitious
Triglot
Newbie
France
Joined 4510 days ago

36 posts - 39 votes
Speaks: French*, EnglishC1, Italian

 
 Message 1 of 8
04 February 2014 at 6:32pm | IP Logged 
Hi !

I've come to the point where I don't know what to do to progress.
My goal for Russian language is only comprehension, I like listening to this language and my main goal is being able to understand what's being said in a movie, a TV show or a conversation. Output is not my concern right now.

I've been learning Russian language with Assimil and then I've watched many many movies or episodes in Russian with no subtitles. It's been more than a year I've been watching regularly TV shows in Russian, almost daily. My ear is able to decrypt a lot of words I don't know but without the meaning... I decrypt the sound, not the meaning.

Usually, I can understand from 45 to 90% because :
_ the images really help, so I can understand what's going on but not necessarily understand the words
_ sometimes it's something I've already watched, even if it was a few years ago it's helpful for understanding.
_ regarding the exact understanding of the words and meaning, usually I recognize and understand exactly 45-60%
Actually I recognize more, my ear decrypts a lot of words, but decrypting words you don't know is not helpful if you don't know what they mean.

I'm not really interested in reading, I'm not a big fan of reading in general. Plus what I like in Russian is mostly the melody.

So to be honest, I don't really care if I'm not able to speak/write Russian for the moment. My wish - my dream - is to be able to understand.

But I have no further ideas for acquiring vocabulary. I always have this feeling that I need something like 10% or maybe less vocabulary to finally understand almost each episode I watch, like I've reached a plateau. There are a lot of movies I feel very frustrated because I'm pretty sure I get the meaning but it's just guessing.

I read several versions of Russian Assimil, I learned more vocabulary, but it didn't really help me for understanding better an episode or maybe 2%.
And the thing is if I hear a word I don't know and discover its meaning, I will remember it everytime, but if I read a word in cyrillic I don't know and learn its meaning, most of the time I'll have to read it several times in a week to remember it.

I have tried to put English subtitles, I get too distracted by them, I don't hear the language anymore.

Thanks in advance for your advices.

1 person has voted this message useful



albysky
Triglot
Senior Member
Italy
lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4379 days ago

287 posts - 393 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, English, German

 
 Message 2 of 8
05 February 2014 at 1:38pm | IP Logged 
It is actually a complex thing. Assimil is just the starting point ,but in order to really
understand a lot you need a huge amout of exposure . i speak from my experience with German that i am
able to understand from 90 to 100 percent under pretty much every form and shape ,radio, tv etc . ( When i
say i understand from 90 to 100 percent i actually mean i recognize clearly 90/100 %of the words i hear).
If i were you i
would stop
watching movies with subtitles and concentrate on things way more dense and effective, it is unrealistic to
obtain the necessary vocab just by watching English subtitled movies . I would start to get my hands on
podcasts with a transcript , i would be progressive starting from not too dificult and not too long podcasts
. I would listen and read them , search the unknown words on a dictionary . I would keep adding new
podacsts more and more long and difficult while keep L/R the ones that i have already analysized . After
having gone through this process and having collected at least 10 hours of recording on my mp3 (THE
MORE THE BETTER),i would get a popular novel in russian that i can also find a good audiobook as well for
. Read the novel,search the words ,listen and read , try to only listen . Maybe you can do that even with
even 2 or 3 short novels . The more exposure the better . At this point i should be able to tackle
documentaries and tv series and understand from 80 to 90 per cent . Russian subtitels in this stage could
be
important , because you can stop and take down some notes of words and expressions . I would also try
to find
some radio programms i like , to develop listening comprehension the radio is better since you have no
images and the language is more dense . At this point i could also start apply Vlad 's massive listening
tecnique here the link to know more about it http://www.languageisculture.com/episode2/
At the end of all that you should be able to understand from 90 to 100 percent ofpretty much everything .
As
you can see it is a damanding process ,especially with a language like russian ,but it can be done , it just
takes a lot of time . I hope it
helps

Edited by albysky on 05 February 2014 at 2:32pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



PeteP
Newbie
United States
Joined 5028 days ago

27 posts - 48 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Romanian

 
 Message 3 of 8
05 February 2014 at 5:39pm | IP Logged 
I like albysky's suggestion of podcasts with transcript. These can very likely be found
at Radio Free Europe's Russian site
http://www.svoboda.org/

Radio Free Europe's Moldova site is a fantastic resource for Romanian and I would expect
that their Russian site is very similar.
2 persons have voted this message useful



ElComadreja
Senior Member
Philippines
bibletranslatio
Joined 7229 days ago

683 posts - 757 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog

 
 Message 4 of 8
06 February 2014 at 3:46am | IP Logged 
I'm still working out this kind of thing myself and often beating my head against a wall. I'll say this though, when I took away the visual cues it was a whole different ballgame. It took 5 days to be able to do *anything* with that, Even though I could easily read a transcript. When someone's just talking to you don't get as much visual cues (unless maybe you're learning Italian ;)

Edited by ElComadreja on 06 February 2014 at 3:46am

2 persons have voted this message useful



pesahson
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 5719 days ago

448 posts - 840 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian

 
 Message 5 of 8
06 February 2014 at 3:45pm | IP Logged 
From what I gather, it seems that you just don't have enough vocabulary. You write that you can decrypt a lot from what you hear. It is the first step to understanding. If you don't know the meaning of many words, you can't make a guess from the context because there is too much information missing. You can relay on guessing if you know the language pretty well. If you can decrypt the word, why not just look it up in a dictionary? It might be painstaking in the beginning, but if pays off. Also, as already suggested, podcasts with transcripts are the way to go. You need a lot more vocabulary and they are great for that.


2 persons have voted this message useful



Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5047 days ago

2096 posts - 2972 votes 
Speaks: Russian*

 
 Message 6 of 8
06 February 2014 at 4:11pm | IP Logged 
pesahson wrote:
From what I gather, it seems that you just don't have enough
vocabulary. You write that you can decrypt a lot from what you hear. It is the first step
to understanding. If you don't know the meaning of many words, you can't make a guess
from the context because there is too much information missing. You can relay on guessing
if you know the language pretty well. If you can decrypt the word, why not just look it
up in a dictionary? It might be painstaking in the beginning, but if pays off. Also, as
already suggested, podcasts with transcripts are the way to go. You need a lot more
vocabulary and they are great for that.


Well, looking up a Russian word in a dictionary is not a trivial task, you know.
1 person has voted this message useful



pesahson
Diglot
Senior Member
Poland
Joined 5719 days ago

448 posts - 840 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English
Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian

 
 Message 7 of 8
06 February 2014 at 4:26pm | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:


Well, looking up a Russian word in a dictionary is not a trivial task, you know.[/QUOTE]

I'm not sure I know what you mean.
Do you mean that it's hard because of orthography? It was the author of the topic who wrote he can decrypt Russian words. I assume it means he can write correctly what he hears. If he can't, the same advice applies really. Listening with transcripts.
1 person has voted this message useful



shapd
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6140 days ago

126 posts - 208 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Modern Hebrew, French, Russian

 
 Message 8 of 8
07 February 2014 at 12:33pm | IP Logged 
I suggest looking at Ilya Frank's site. He has a hundred episode podcast of short episodes in a girl's life with dual language explanation. It starts very simple and rapidly introduces more vocabulary. At the end of it you should be able to understand most everyday Russian. Other podcasts include Taste of Russian and russianpodcast.eu. All worth checking out.


2 persons have voted this message useful



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