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Russian Read&Speak - TAC 2013 Team Mir | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 17 of 142 23 January 2013 at 3:40pm | IP Logged |
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Lesson 58 was a bit more interesting, I think I could take a little more profit from it.
I paid more attention when doing the exercises. I start to think 4 languages is a bit too much for TAC results. Ideally, I should study from two sources for each language per day. I can only do this for Georgian and Chinese, not for Russian and Norwegian. Therefore, I feel that my progress in the latter is being hindered. I'll have to find time maybe twice a week for more intense Russian learning. Maybe anki or just reading random information from a grammar. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zecchino1991 Senior Member United States facebook.com/amyybur Joined 5256 days ago 778 posts - 885 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian | Message 18 of 142 23 January 2013 at 4:42pm | IP Logged |
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Oh my God! Why haven't I been subscribed to this thread?! I thought I was! Well ok, I'm here now. I'll read
the whole thing soon. :O 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 19 of 142 28 January 2013 at 3:00pm | IP Logged |
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I've finished the first but last week of Assimil's Il nuovo russo senza sforzo. I found
the time for studying on Saturday, one thing I never do. Now it's only one week until I finish this book and start Russian over. I got a few Skype penpals but I still don't know enough Russian for starting a conversation. Maybe this will change after I have finished my second Assimil book, in a few months. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 20 of 142 31 January 2013 at 9:00pm | IP Logged |
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It's about time I write an overview of my first TAC month, and since this is the only
log of mine I started in 2013 and is currently the mostly neglected one (blame Assimil Russian on this, it takes up all the time :D) I decided to write it here. Even though I could only resume studying at January 21st, this month saw the upcoming of big achievements and improvements which will enhance my language learning. The first and most important of it is the late realizing that I can have Skype sessions with my iPad. So far I thought I wouldn't be able to voicechat because the mic at my desktop is not working, but then I realized even my old iPad 1 has a built-in microphone. After my first team Mir session, I later asked for a more advanced learner to give me the contact of Russian speakers, so I could chat and voicechat. Now I have quite a few Russians at my contacts list, one of them even started giving me a full lesson on pronunciation. It was great! I also notice that my listening skills have improved a lot thanks to consistent listening, either through textbooks or native materials. More about that at each language session. Russian: I'm still at the vicious/virtuous circle of Assimil's 70-lesson Russian course. I couldn't study yday or today so I expect to finish the dreadful book by next week, then start...Russian without toil. I also plan to have more conversations, but I'm aware I need to improve my Russian first in order to have more practical ones, since it's troublesome to look up the dictionary when chatting through voice. Besides, next week I plan to start learning Georgian through a textbook in Russian. That did great to my German after a couple of weeks for a language I was stuck at at B2, and I hope Russian will follow along. I'm going to count on the great fellow teammate zecchino, so, needless to say, my chances of annihilating this Russian/Georgian task are really high! I really hope I'll be able to read simple texts in Russian by the end of 2013. Georgian: Georgian is the language for which I forecast more trouble and the least chance of finally reaching B1. Once again I see myself lost without help from natives, only with the help of an advanced learner for grammar questions. For this reason and since I haven't learned from a colloquial resource lately, I really don't even feel like trying to write in Georgian. Things may change if I am successful at the textbook in Russian, which has loads of phrases. I do hope that by the end of the year I'll be able to read news texts on a regular basis and discussing them with my pals. Btw, a friend of mine promised me to share the contact of two Georgians through Skype, I've crossed my fingers in the hopes that it becomes true! Mandarin Chinese: I've finally come across another book that is inspiring and motivating, Colloquial Chinese 2. I'm used to distinguishing individual sounds even if I can't always get the overall meaning. The book slowly introduces short texts and I start to get over the fear of reading anything other than textbook dialogues in Chinese. I'd say my level is currently A2 and what I need the most now is Chinese language penpals, either text-only or voicechat included, either more advanced learners or native speakers. Is there anyone who would be glad to help? Norwegian: Teach Yourself Norwegian and its continuous story boosted my motivation really high. Nothing can be more interesting in a textbook than following a story along its chapters. I've fully recovered from the trauma of the final half of Assimil Norvégien, and I'm getting to that very same moment I went through in French long ago: the language 'clicks', you get to make more sense out of it than no sense of all, you feel like you've earned one more soul, since people say learning a new language is possessing a second soul. In my case, I don't need to be proficient on a language for that, all that I need is a positive feeling that I've broken the barrier of access into that language and that my knowledge won't be lost anymore. That might have come at B1 level for French so maybe that's what I'm approaching now at Norwegian, at least in terms of reading. It's hard to explain, I start to feel the culture is more and more familiar. A friend says that you've then become part of the collective unconscious of that language/people. Well, I want to keep my goal of being able to read Norwegian by the end of the year, reading Jostein Gaarder in his native language, and I hope some Skype sessions will help me improve my listening and pronunciation. This should be happening to Georgian given the longer time I'm studying it, but I really don't see it happening soon. English: I'm listing English here because I still have a hard time understanding spoken English. Even my writing is far from perfect anyway, but I can make myself understood. Well, Team Mir's Skype session was the first time I could have a longer conversation in English! I could follow it most of the times. Besides, I'm getting more used to watching TV series. I plan to keep using Skype and TV Series as my main sources for reaching spoken English fluency! French: More or less the same goes as for English above. I'm writing TV series regularly, even if with subtitles. I do need Skype penpals so I can improve my spoken French. I can already read French well, so I am for understand standard spoken French fluently. German: It isn't a language I'm working on directly. Together with Russian, it was one of my frustrations. I got stuck at low A2, being overwhelmed by vocabulary, and, in the case of German, also by word order. On this, I should thank Georgian twice. Georgian also has a different syntax for subordinate clauses and deals with case endings syntactically in a complex way (even it morphologically it's no big deal). SO, after dealing with several word orders in Georgian, I could face German again. What brought me into German again was a Georgian grammar, from Kita Tschenkéli, the one I refer to all the time at my Georgian log. That book is so well-written, explanations are so logical, that I'm learning more Georgian as I get used to reading German in a linguistic context. That's killing two birds with a stone in a useful and enjoyable way! So, I believe that by the end of the year I'll be reading German texts with no big deal. Italian: Studying Russian through Assimil Italian was not a bad idea at all. Even though I could already read in Italian prior to that, I've become aware of several colloquial expressions that are typical of Assimil books and which got translated into Italian. My vocabulary also improved overall. I'm not really focusing on Italian now, but it was a great side effect. Esperanto: I forgot to say that my Russian lesson occurred entirely in Esperanto! The contact I have is an esperantist and likes to talk only in Esperanto, so I had to get used to it. It was the first time I talked in Esperanto. It's like Romance languages, I can understand quite a bit but I still lack the correct words for expressing myself (maybe even harder because I can't make a wild-cognate-guess and be right that often). Esperanto, like German and Italian, is not a language I'm focusing on actively studying right now, but, considering I'm no longer a beginner, it's always nice to have some unexpected learning. So, that's it. I could have mentioned Spanish but I'll be only working on it again after I've reached my goals for French listening skills. It's not much likely that a new language will pop up in 2013, no matter how wanderlust harasses us, but I'm very much confident about my goals for the aforementioned ones, considering the improvement in infrastructure, support from friends and personal motivation! EDIT: typo, bad formatting, added Esperanto Edited by Expugnator on 01 February 2013 at 12:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 21 of 142 01 February 2013 at 4:35pm | IP Logged |
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I decided to just read the lesson that was due yesterday, nuber 65, not listen to the tapes or write down the exercises. I wasn't sure I would be able to do it today, and it was becoming annoying to open the book several times and be unable to study. I'm at the end of the book anyway, and I don't think skipping audio and exercises for a single lesson will do any harm. Better than skipping the whole lesson at once :) Now only lessons 66-70 to go.
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| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 22 of 142 04 February 2013 at 7:48pm | IP Logged |
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One step a day! Today I did lesson 67. Only two days to finish, a new Assimil is coming on Thursday. I'm starting to get the hang of Russian syntax, which is not bad, at least I can tell a noun apart from a verb or an adverb.
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| zecchino1991 Senior Member United States facebook.com/amyybur Joined 5256 days ago 778 posts - 885 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian | Message 23 of 142 06 February 2013 at 1:53am | IP Logged |
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I was wondering, how much Russian can you understand? Like, when you are using Russian
textbooks how much are you able to understand without looking things up? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 24 of 142 06 February 2013 at 4:08pm | IP Logged |
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I'd need a dictionary all the time. I'm not familiar with the grammatical terminology. Still, online translators are good and I hope I get used after a few weeks, as it happened with German.
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