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Gary’s TAC 2011 - Team Œ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Marina8 Diglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 5098 days ago 15 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Russian*, English | Message 9 of 104 27 December 2010 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | ||
Hi,If you have any questions about Russian language, feel free to ask me as Russian is my native language. I study English professionally, so it will be good practice for you and me :) Me in SKYPE: marina.ko3 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 104 28 December 2010 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Not much language related work done over the last week or so because of Christmas... I did read a very strange French book called C'est le monde qui parle; I didn't have a dictionary with me so didn't understand all the words but I understood enough to know what was going on. Also I've spent a bit of time trying to make a start on Russian.
Russian is a bit frustrating, things just aren't sticking very easily. I learn words/phrases then forget them again in a few minutes! So I'm hoping that with enough repetition (reading them, listening to them, speaking them, writing them) they'll stick, and once I get past the absolute beginner stage my acquisition will speed up a bit. It's quite different from my experience with Italian where I picked up the basics really quickly and they stuck, but Russian has the added difficulties of a different alphabet and its pronunciation. I'm still getting the hang of the alphabet and pronunciation, which I reckon is part of the problem - my brain's having to process these as well as the vocabulary and grammar. I tried Pimsleur Russian but found it quite hard to follow because of the lack of text. I might give it a look later on but for now I'm sticking to Princeton/Myrussianteacher, FSI Fast, and Penguin once it's arrived. Thanks for the offer Marina, I'd definitely like to talk once I've learned the basics! I'm also trying to work out the practical side of studying several languages at once - I find that working on one language for 30-60 minutes, i.e., enough to do a lesson or two from a course, is quite enough so in my free time I'm currently alternating between "blocks" of Russian, French, and guitar practice. Tempted to throw some Italian in there too but that means less time on the higher priority activities... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 104 29 December 2010 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||
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So I gave into the Italian temptation and started on Michel Thomas Italian. Which reminded me of how good the MT courses are - an MT Basic course isn't quite as comprehensive as a full Pimsleur course but it covers a lot of the same ground in a lot less time, and he explains just enough grammar and spelling to make picking up the language a lot easier. Excellent course, if the first lesson's anything to go by. The main complaints about MT are regarding bad pronunciation and slow students, but the Italian course doesn't seem too bad at all in these respects so far.
Now I'm tempted to look into the French Advanced course (which will probably be mostly revision to me, but fill in some gaps and consolidate some knowledge) and also the basic Russian course. Apparently the Russian course isn't done by Michel himself and it's not quite as good, and maybe I'll have the same problems I had with Pimsleur due to the foreignness of Russian and the lack of writing, but it's available from the library (as is pretty much every MT course!) so I won't lose anything if I don't like it. I'm thinking about my Russian strategy, as I'll quite possibly be in Ukraine in a month or even sooner and there's no way I'm going to gain anywhere near a good knowledge of the language by then. So I think my plan is to learn the very basic stuff and learn it well within the next month, learn as much everyday/conversational language as I can when I'm there, then start a more thorough and slow-paced study of grammar etc. when I get back. At that point Russian will most likely fall to the bottom of my priority list since I won't have such strong motivation and I'll be starting to think about French exams, but I doubt I'll want to give it up since it's a beautiful language (in fact I'd say more so than Italian) and I might as well finish what I start! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 12 of 104 29 December 2010 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||
I've done all three MT Russian courses (Foundation, Advanced, and Vocabulary) and I really liked them. The teacher is excellent, and between the three courses it covers a surprising amount of grammar and vocabulary. Personally I like the courses that aren't by Michel Thomas himself better (Russian, Polish, Dutch, Japanese...). I'd say go for it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 104 30 December 2010 at 11:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks ellasevia, I got a hold of MT Basic Russian and did the first lesson, and I was impressed - looks like it's the course I was searching for all along. It comes with a booklet that has the main words written down which is very useful and solves the "no writing" problem that I had anticipated. It does feel quite hard-going because of the lesson length (1 hour) but what I learned seems to be sticking better than in the other courses. I definitely now aim to finish the course before my trip, as well as making a start on Advanced and getting some real life conversation experience if I have the time.
I'm starting to get a bit of language interference from Italian though - at a couple of points in the MT Russian lesson I was wanting to say "dove" instead of "где" for "where". I get absolutely no interference between French and Italian despite them being very similar - so my conclusion is that studying multiple languages at a time is OK as long as they're at different levels (e.g., my intermediate French and beginner Russian), but when you're at the beginner stage in both and you're doing similar exercises for each one (e.g., me working through MT basic for both) then it's a lot easier to get mixed up. So I should probably go back to the original plan and just leave Italian until later, especially when my life starts to get busy again. But Italian keeps seducing me and making me want it now, and the fact that it seems relatively easy and I make fast progress with it, unlike with Russian, motivates me to keep going. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Oasis88 Senior Member Australia Joined 5707 days ago 160 posts - 187 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Italian | Message 14 of 104 30 December 2010 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | ||
That's right... come to the dark side! I really enjoyed MT Italian. I could easily picture the male student rolling his eyes and tapping his foot waiting for the female student to answer. Quality stuff, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 15 of 104 03 January 2011 at 12:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm off work and don't have much on so I've managed to do plenty studying (as well as plenty guitar playing!) in the last few days.
French: - Watched a few episodes of Misfits dubbed in French, as well as the film Bienvenue chez les ch'tis, both with no subtitles. I understood most things, didn't quite pick up all the words but I had no trouble following the plot and understanding the humour, which is good because in Bienvenue chez les ch'tis a lot of the humour is based on the language and culture. - Watched the film Baise-moi; the version I got had hard subtitles in English so I didn't have much choice in the matter, but I reckon I would've had a hard time without them because the language used is so colloquial. French subs would've been very useful but I couldn't find them anywhere. I'd recommend the film if you want so see a lot of colloquial speech in action, as well as a lot of... ahem... another kind of action which can be inferred from the title. - Getting very close to finishing the Assimil passive wave! - Finished FSI Phonology! I definitely feel that my speaking and listening are improving slowly but surely, and I'll get to put them to the test until next week when I should hopefully be starting with tuition, if not before if I can get some Skyping in. I also found out about Yakety Yak, which is a conversation group like the Meetup but a lot more geared towards helping learners, so I'll definitely give it a try when it starts back in a week or two. In the next couple of days I plan on watching a couple more films (Les 400 Coups and OSS 117: Le Caire nid d'espions; I found out about the latter from Cazgram's log) and completing the last few Assimil lessons. After that I'll start on MT Advanced and maybe Using French. Russian: Done the first 5 lessons of MT. It's still difficult and I keep forgetting words, but I don't think I'm finding it any more difficult than the students on the recording :). Any more Russian than that just feels like too much to take in at the moment, although I'll go back to Myrussianteacher to revise, see the words in a different context, and learn the all-important ты (informal "you") forms. In all honesty I'm still not feeling the love for Russian and studying it feels like a chore, whereas I enjoy studying my other languages and look forward to studying them. Hopefully if I just keep at it I'll get more into it; that method worked for my French! Currently trying to motivate myself by listening to some Аркона, thinking about how much more I'll enjoy Ukraine if I can speak a bit of Russian, thinking about the women from Slavic-language-speaking countries, whatever it takes... Italian: resisting the temptation again, at least until I start to get somewhere with Russian. Time management (I did say at the start that this would be important!): I usually go to the gym two days a week, after work. However, if I start going during my lunch hour instead I'll have more free time in the evening for languages and guitar, and the gym's a lot less busy at lunchtime than it is in the evening so I won't be wasting time waiting to use equipment. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5209 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 104 05 January 2011 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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So I didn't get much studying done over the last couple of days. However a couple of my friends who just got back from 6 months in Russia hosted a Russian Vodka Party where we drank vodka, watched a really bad movie where Arnie attempts to play a Russian (Red Heat), and had some geeky conversations about the Russian language and languages in general. That definitely gave me some more enthusiasm towards the language. I was far too tired and hungover the next day to do any sort of studying, although I did do a lot of guitar playing and music recording so at least I still had a productive day. Then I couldn't get to sleep so ended up doing a couple of Assimil French lessons.
Exciting language news: this morning my Penguin Russian book finally arrived; I'm going to do the very last Assimil French lesson this evening; and it looks like I might be moving in with an Italian friend later this year which will no doubt be useful for my Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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