Belle Epoque Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 3625 days ago 16 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese Studies: Russian
| Message 1 of 24 31 December 2014 at 11:52pm | IP Logged |
It has been over two decades since I studied Russian. This year will be a new beginning. My goals are (1) acquisition of 3000 words, learning 10 words a day, (2) ability to watch Russian movies, such as "The Irony of Fate" without subtitles, (3) constant improvement, by the end of next year.
For the past week, I have finished "Pronounce It Perfectly In Russian" and 11 lessons of phonetics from "Le russe à votre rythme". I am thinking of tackling "Корректировочный курс фонетики русского языка" but I do not have the time to devote to correct pronunciation. There are soft and hard consonants that I am unable to differenciate. As of right now, it is sufficient for me.
Two resources I am using are "Assimil Le russe sans peine" and "Modern Russian". I have heard raved reviews about Assimil, especially this edition for Russian.
I just hope that I will accomplish my goals without stopping.
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Belle Epoque Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 3625 days ago 16 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese Studies: Russian
| Message 2 of 24 10 January 2015 at 8:23pm | IP Logged |
I have complete 10 lessons of "Assimil le russe sans peine." With the help of WorkBookAudio software, I am able to segment a 2-minute lessons into numerous 3 to 5-second segments allowing me to rewind and repeat easily. I would repeat each sentence 5 to 7 times or until I can pronounce it with ease. In addition, any new vocabulary word is incorporated in Anki, and if I am able to remember the vocabulary, I immediately delete from the Anki list. Concerning "Modern Russian" it is heavily concentrated on gaining automaticity, so after the first 2 lessons I have finished, I can say the phrases I have learned quite well without much mental effort.
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Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5048 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian*
| Message 3 of 24 10 January 2015 at 8:58pm | IP Logged |
Belle Epoque wrote:
For the past week, I have finished "Pronounce It Perfectly In Russian" and 11 lessons of phonetics from "Le russe à votre rythme". I am thinking of tackling "Корректировочный курс фонетики русского языка" but I do not have the time to devote to correct pronunciation. There are soft and hard consonants that I am unable to differenciate. As of right now, it is sufficient for me.
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Only hard and soft consonants! Such a small thing is left!
Edited by Марк on 10 January 2015 at 9:09pm
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Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5048 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian*
| Message 4 of 24 10 January 2015 at 9:10pm | IP Logged |
Belle Epoque wrote:
I would repeat each sentence 5 to 7 times or until I can pronounce it with ease |
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It seems to me that it's not worth repeating something unless you reached a certain level of phonetics.
Edited by Марк on 10 January 2015 at 11:30pm
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Belle Epoque Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 3625 days ago 16 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese Studies: Russian
| Message 5 of 24 17 January 2015 at 9:54pm | IP Logged |
I am currently on lesson 21 of "Assimil le russe sans peine" and I have finished lesson 3 of "Modern Russian". Lesson 3 of "Modern Russian" emphasized on the alternation of voiced and voiceless consonants which took a lot of time to get used to. The more I have devoted to language learning, the more problems I have encountered with my professional and family life. I wish I could spend one solid hour everyday studying Russian, but such is not the case.
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Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4836 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian
| Message 6 of 24 18 January 2015 at 1:30pm | IP Logged |
Hey Belle Epoque,
good luck with your Russian studies! If you have any questions or need help, remember that Team Pushkin is always there for you. Don't let yourself get daunted by Russian pronunciation, it might take a little while to "kick in"! It's a good start if you can distinguish hard and soft consonants.
Удачи! (Good luck!)
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Belle Epoque Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 3625 days ago 16 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese Studies: Russian
| Message 7 of 24 26 January 2015 at 3:06am | IP Logged |
The holidays are gone, and more hours are required at work; thus, I have shortened my language studies at home while utilizing travel time to listen to Russian. This week I have accomplished lesson 4 of Modern Russian. My mp3's digitized from the cassettes have unbearable static, but fortunately I was able to download the audio files from University of Indiana website http://www.iu.edu/~celtie/russian_b09.html
For a beginner, the audio files which contain both English and Russian are very useful, but for a later stage of learning, I would prefer all Russian. As for Assimil, I have accomplished 7 more lessons.
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Belle Epoque Bilingual Triglot Newbie United States Joined 3625 days ago 16 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese Studies: Russian
| Message 8 of 24 01 February 2015 at 7:13pm | IP Logged |
My work has normalized and there is no more drama occurring, hopefully. Since creating Anki deck has taken so much of my time, I have decided to leave it in the back burner for now. After finishing 7 more lessons of Assimil, I am on lesson 34. One bad point that I am not doing is to read notes of each lesson. I have a tendency just to listen to the dialogue and understand its vocabulary while ignoring all the explanations. This is a mistake on my learning--always rushing to accomplish a lesson and move on to the next one. As for "Modern Russian", I do like the repetitive drills which help tremendously in my pronunciation and attainment of automaticity.
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