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Nu, pogodi! ( Russian study-and-click )

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Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5562 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 25 of 96
17 January 2011 at 12:24am | IP Logged 
Nu, pogodi! - Day 6

Study-and-click: 2 hours (20 total)
Current text: Евгений Замятин, "Мы"
New words clicked whilst listening and reading: 166 (1034 total)
New words clicked whilst listening only: 155 (996 total)
Reading test score: 85% (+8%, "Дневной дозор", Глава 6, 100 words)
Current estimated reading level: B1

Wahoo...85% so soon, but I don't understand why! This is my highest reading score ever with text this level, yet I haven't exactly put my nose to the grindstone with studies so far this year. Encouraging, yet very odd. For whatever reason, both the novel and reading test seemed much easier to follow, with phrases often coming to mind rather than cherry-picking juicy words from amongst the thorns. Perhaps the texts were just easier, or the previous sections harder...but whatever happened, I feel today marks a little epiphany or "critical mass" moment, and this leaves me curious about what would happen if I put in a little more effort next week...

@CheeseInsider, Buttons
Thanks guys! Sometimes I wonder what my neighbour must think of all these strange noises coming through the wall...maybe they think I've got a Russian parrot and a clicking bus-ticket machine.


Edited by Teango on 11 March 2011 at 10:16pm

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Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5562 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 26 of 96
19 January 2011 at 10:48pm | IP Logged 
Nu, pogodi! - Day 7

Study-and-click: 4 hours (24 total)
Current text: Евгений Замятин, "Мы"
New words clicked whilst listening and reading: 295 (1,329 total)
New words clicked whilst listening only: 260 (1,256 total)
Reading test score: 85% (--%, "Дневной дозор", Часть вторая, Глава 1, 100 words)
Current estimated reading level: B1

Some say absence makes the heart grow fonder, which probably explains why I'm so excited to climb back into Zamyatin's frightful little view of the future this evening. It's been frustrating having so much to do elsewhere over the last few weeks, and I'd rather have been unfolding what happens next to D-503 and his hapless companions. A good story with quality materials and well-aligned parallel text makes studying a sheer joy! :)

Edited by Teango on 11 March 2011 at 10:16pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5562 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 28 of 96
24 January 2011 at 11:01pm | IP Logged 
Nu, pogodi! - Day 8

Study-and-click: 10 hours (34 total)
Current text: Евгений Замятин, "Мы"
New words clicked whilst listening and reading: 565 (1,894 total)
New words clicked whilst listening only: 473 (1,729 total)
Reading test score: 84% (-1%, "Дневной дозор", Часть вторая, Глава 2, 100 words)
Current estimated reading level: B1

It's fascinating to read early twentieth-century science-fiction and find electric toothbrushes, tidal wave energy and talking books popping up. Zamyatin's "We" has no doubt influenced a veritable sea of authors over the last century in terms of its content and genre, but I also wonder how far books like this have played a hand in a few of our modern inventions too.

With lots of passive vocabulary bouncing around in my head, I find there's a bit of mental chatter after prolonged study. Sometimes I hear a whisper in the background; other times I feel like repeating some of these words aloud. I also occasionally find that some of the words are not entirely real, but subconsciously pieced together from clouds of ideas and morphemes I just took a fancy to earlier on. It's as though my mind is constantly playing and inventing in its own little Russian crèche right now, trying to click together new-found linguistic lego bricks in amusing or fun combinations, and letting out a mischievous giggle through the wall when it constructs something familiar every now and again. :)

Edited by Teango on 11 March 2011 at 10:16pm

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ellasevia
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2011
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Germany
Joined 6148 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 29 of 96
24 January 2011 at 11:49pm | IP Logged 
Teango wrote:
With lots of passive vocabulary bouncing around in my head, I find there's a bit of mental chatter after prolonged study. Sometimes I hear a whisper in the background; other times I feel like repeating some of these words aloud. I also occasionally find that some of the words are not entirely real, but subconsciously pieced together from clouds of ideas and morphemes I just took a fancy to earlier on. It's as though my mind is constantly playing and inventing in its own little Russian crèche right now, trying to click together new-found linguistic lego bricks in amusing or fun combinations, and letting out a mischievous giggle through the wall when it constructs something familiar every now and again. :)

I experienced something like this in the fall when I had been listening to hours and hours of Arabic audio in the background while I worked. I remember that on a couple occasions I suddenly spun around in the school cafeteria the next day because I could have sworn that I had heard someone speaking in Arabic behind me, and I just had to know who it was!
1 person has voted this message useful



Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5562 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 30 of 96
28 January 2011 at 11:40pm | IP Logged 
Nu, pogodi! - Day 9

Study-and-click: 3 hours (37 total)
Current text: Евгений Замятин, "Мы"
New words clicked whilst listening and reading: 199 (2,093 total)
New words clicked whilst listening only: 171 (1,900 total)
Current estimated reading level: B1

I decided to get in some light study whilst the going was good and score a dose of Zamyatin this evening. One positive thing that hit me in the middle of studying is that I generally understand a lot more and need to pause less frequently. It feels particularly rewarding, I can tell you, when you uncover an oasis of understanding and can just read a long sentence or two without looking over to the English.

Another thing I've noticed is that reading scores can really jump around a lot depending on the section I just happen to get that day and the variability or mood of the author throughout the story. Prologues and the beginning of chapters are often vocabulary hotspots where authors like to show off their style and exercise a more extensive range of vocabulary; whereas mid-chapter dialogues tend to be a more gentle walk in the park by comparison.

I've always been a bit hard on myself in this respect, as I've deliberately aimed for a negative variance by sticking with the beginnings of each chapter. This is mainly because I'd like to pick up any book in a store at the same level and in a similar genre and be better prepared for jumps in reading difficulty within the novel. Sometimes this approach can lead to pleasant surprises, where the text falls closer to the average difficulty of the book; other times I can get very downhearted and resigned, as I look on at my percentages stuck in plateau-ville or even plummeting into anomalous lexical free-fall.

Therefore I've decided to make the whole process a little fairer and motivating by i) taking reading scores after increasingly spaced intervals of clicks, and ii) using a larger test set. It's not an ideal solution, by any means, but it should help. Firstly, I'm hoping that there will be less overlap in variance between progressively spaced tests, and hence I predict scores will jump up in a more useful quantum fashion. Secondly, I think the number of words I've clicked is a much more reliable indicator of when it's time to next check on reading progress (my next test, for exampe, will be after 4,000 clicks).

@Buttons
Hah! I'd love to be a veritable cheetah dashing through the savanna, but this week I feel more like a disgruntled groundhog on little mini-hog-crutches...(lol)

@ellasevia
I imagine you must hear quite a medley of cool languages buzzing around you. Which voice would you say is loudest in your current language pantheon, and do you find that the words and languages tend to intermingle from time to time? :)

Edited by Teango on 11 March 2011 at 10:17pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Teango
Triglot
Winner TAC 2010 & 2012
Senior Member
United States
teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5562 days ago

2210 posts - 3734 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Russian
Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona

 
 Message 31 of 96
02 February 2011 at 11:40pm | IP Logged 
Nu, pogodi! - Day 10

Study-and-click: 6 hours (43 total)
Current text: Евгений Замятин, "Мы"
New words clicked whilst listening and reading: 418 (2,511 total)
New words clicked whilst listening only: 303 (2,203 total)
Current estimated reading level: B1

I'm enjoying Russian words more and more as I learn to pick out the morphemes and link this to the meaning. For example, I easily learnt the word "впитывает" (absorbs) today, as a combination of в (in) + пить (drink) + ывает (3rd person singular verb) - i.e. "drinks in". As my vocabulary and awareness of morphology increases, so does my ability to remember new words. :)

Edited by Teango on 11 March 2011 at 10:18pm

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ellasevia
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2011
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6148 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 32 of 96
03 February 2011 at 1:27am | IP Logged 
Teango wrote:
@ellasevia
I imagine you must hear quite a medley of cool languages buzzing around you. Which voice would you say is loudest in your current language pantheon, and do you find that the words and languages tend to intermingle from time to time? :)

English is naturally still the loudest since I'm constantly surrounded by it, but while I'm working I try to listen to something not in English, be that radio, music, movies, the audio-drama Bible from Professor Arguelles's site, or anything else as long as it doesn't drive me crazy. For example, right now I'm listening to this documentary in Polish in the background.

Lately though, I've been having lots of Swedish, Dutch, and Persian in my head since I've been doing so much of them in the past month. I'm predicting that the same will happen with Romanian and Greek beginning in April, when they become my focus languages. Of course, this also changes throughout the day; after having been immersed in German for an hour at school I often find myself thinking in German on the way to my English class, for example.

For mixing, the biggest problems for me are probably:
Swedish <-> Dutch
Dutch <-> German
Spanish <-> Greek
Swahili <-> Japanese (for some reason my brain refuses to accept that 'samaki' is not a Japanese word and that 図書館 [toshokan] is not a Swahili word)


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