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TAC 2011: Team Ж - geordie | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| geordie Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5031 days ago 24 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 26 27 December 2010 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm excited to be a part of the Total Annihilation Challenge 2011 (sounds more like a
video game than a language learning contest lol). This is a genius idea and it's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. I've tried learning languages on my own before, to no avail, since I lose motivation quickly and become bored easily. Also, I don't have many friends with whom to practice, so I often forget what I learn, become frustrated, and give up. So this time I've decided not to make the same mistakes (i.e. trying to force myself to learn when I'm tired/unmotivated, being scared to talk to native speakers and sounding stupid, pretending I know more than I do, etc.). I'm naturally very competitive, so this team challenge thing should work out well for me. I'm looking forward to getting to know my teammates (Solfrid Cristin, nogoodnik, and snovymgodom), and working together to reach our goals. Language Background: My mother tongue is English, and I've lived in a predominately English speaking area all my life. I studied French throughout elementary and high school and took a course in university. I can read novels in French and get my point across when I speak so I'd say I'm at about a C1 level. I've dabbled in learning other languages, specifically Portuguese, Mandarin, and Spanish, in order of proficiency, though I'd still put myself around A1. Language Goals: My primary goal is to become proficient in Russian by the end of 2011. I wrote in the sticky TAC thread that my goal is to go from A2 to C1, but after looking into it some more, I think A1 is more accurate. So my goal will be to go from A1 -> C1 in 12 months. As for secondary goals, I'd like to improve my French a bit, from C1 -> C2, and maybe brush up on the other languages I mentioned, i.e. Portuguese, Mandarin, Spanish: A1 -> A2. Language Resources: I will be focusing on Pimsleur, living language, and the Goldlist method, and probably some internet resources as well. After I deem myself proficient enough to get by, I'll hopefully interact with native Russian speakers through skype, email, forums and IRL (I play chess competitively so finding native Russian speakers shouldn't be a problem :D). If anyone has any suggestions of what resources have worked well for them, I'm all for it. Sorry about the long post. Good luck to everyone in the challenge. geordie cliffs: -i'm excited -hi team -i wanna be a triglot by 2012, so I can swear in 3 languages when the world ends -help keep me motivated plz Edited by geordie on 30 December 2010 at 11:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nogoodnik Senior Member United States Joined 5513 days ago 372 posts - 461 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew, Russian, French | Message 2 of 26 28 December 2010 at 5:02am | IP Logged | ||
hahaha...We are going to have a lot of fun and make tremendous progress in 2011! Go team ж! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5278 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 26 28 December 2010 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi geordie! We seem to be at the same level in Russian (A1 - A2) but you have more ambitous goals than I do - which is good! We can inspire eachother.
Si tu veux, on peut aussi pratiquer un peut le Francais. Je ne l'écris jamais, donc ce serait utile pour mois de le faire pour ameliorer mon francais écrit (et je n'arrive pas á trouver la G6&%#ø?¤x cedille sûr ma claviature - je m'excuse). Si quieres tambien un poco de practica con tu español no dudes en decirmelo, estaré a tu disposición. Go team Ж! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| geordie Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5031 days ago 24 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 26 29 December 2010 at 2:26am | IP Logged | ||
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I've decided to spend about an hour a day on learning Russian, and try to maintain that as a bare minimum.
On days when I feel more motivated, I'd exceed that obviously, but this way I'll establish a routine, without forcing myself to do too much at once. Yesterday and today that hour comprised half an hour (one lesson) of Pimsleur, and one 20 minute sesh of vocab (Goldlist). Plus a bit of reviewing spelling rules, etc. I'm skeptical about this goldlist thing, but I'll wait until I start the distillations to decide. For now I'm still working through headlists until the two weeks are up (for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, you can read about it at http://www.usenetposts.com/goldlist.htm). I'm worried that since I'm learning the Cyrillic characters/sounds along with the Russian language itself, my retention will be much less than 30%. Oh well, guess I'll find out soon. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5278 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 26 29 December 2010 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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One hour a day minimum seems like a good plan. Try the "Teach yourself beginner's Russian script". I struggle with the Cyrillic characters too, but that book was a big help, plus it is the only language book which I have actually finished in one sitting (so it was a three hour sitting, but it was still one sitting :). Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 29 December 2010 at 1:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5408 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 6 of 26 29 December 2010 at 10:45pm | IP Logged | ||
I've been pleasantly surprised with the Gold List method, which I'm using for Georgian, so hopefully you will be too. The 30% figure has been pretty meaningless in my case - it's more like anywhere between 10% and 70% - but I always retain at least one or two of the words (sometimes up to 15), and it often happens that I don't remember much of the first distillation but much more by the time I get to the second. So stick with it. I'll be keen to read about your results. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| geordie Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 5031 days ago 24 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 26 30 December 2010 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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What intrigued me most about the gold list method is its simplicity and efficiency. I usually accomplish about 2 headlists in a 20 minute session, which is equivalent to 50 words, or 150 words an hour. I'm not sure how long the distillations take but I'm guessing they'll take less time (less words to write), and I plan to do about 5 distillations, so let's say it'll take about 3 times as long to fully learn all the words. That equals roughly 50 words learned per hour, which seems quite good.
In the past I've absorbed vocabulary more quickly than that, but it obviously didn't get stored in my long term memory, as most have disappeared. I have an excellent short term memory, however the words never stick (I once memorized 215 digits of pi in a 2 hour period. I've only retained the first hundred, mainly from repeating them ad nauseum. I'm quite the hit at parties, as you might guess). Solfrid: Merci pour le titre du livre. Je le rechercherai. C'est plus la pronunciation et les règles d'orthographe avec lesquelles j'ai de la difficulté. Mais ca va bientôt changer, j'espère. Merci pour vos remarques. I'm gonna keep a running total of how long I've spent studying each language. I will have to post less regularly from now on as I'm going away for new years this weekend, and I start work again on Monday, so I'll probably do a weekly update of my progress. Thanks to everyone who visits/comments. Since last post: Russian: 2 hrs Total thus far: Russian: 20 hrs Portuguese: 50 hrs Mandarin: 20 hrs Spanish: 10 hrs French:~2000 hrs English: infinite 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| snovymgodom Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5669 days ago 136 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian | Message 8 of 26 31 December 2010 at 1:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Best of luck with your endeavors!
I remember a good way to get used to the sounds was practicing reading Russian words that are similar or the same as English, so you will focus on reading the letters correctly. Years ago there was a beginners' site that had a list of such words, but I can't find it anymore. One option is to look at names of countries in Russian on http://maps.google.ru/ It's fun, the countries are fairly easy to recognize, and it can't hurt to know how to write and pronounce them correctly from the get-go! You can also use Yandex for this. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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