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Improve my Russian listening & speaking | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5708 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 1 of 11 26 November 2013 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been learning Russian for 4 years and I can comfortably read and write Russian, although there is still a lot of items to be learnt in the vocabulary and culture sections. I have started to listen to native materials such as radio over the internet, as I thought that I have sufficient foundation to understand the basic ideas of the material. To my dismay, I can barely understand 20 per cent of what is broadcasted. The portions which I understood consisted of international words and words I am very familiar with. Russian is spoken very rapidly by natives, even on public radio services and I cannot even process what has been spoken before another word was uttered.
I also have problems with my speaking. I realised that I cannot speak very fluently without messing up my pronunciation. I think I have a tongue shorter than the natives, which is why my tongue is very tired when making palatalized consonants. (The tongue need to touch the palate when making them). Therefore I switch between hard and soft consonants slowly and it slowed down my speech. What can I do to improve my listening and speaking? Is drilling with audio intensive materials like Assimil improve my listening and speaking, even though my knowledge of Russian is higher than the book presents? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4560 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 11 26 November 2013 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Speak more, get some tutoring, and practice. Russians do not speak faster than Dutch
people, you're just not used to decoding speech, only writing. My understanding in oral conversations went up from shitzilla to high within a year when I started taking regular tutoring and then when I went to Russia afterwards for a month. Now I have quite good oral comprehension and I can talk to Russian speakers no problem. For the pronunciation, sit down with a patient native or a speech therapist. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5708 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 3 of 11 26 November 2013 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Can you share the steps or stages in decoding speech? I have managed to understand French after quite a long time of immersion for 3 years, but for Russian it doesn't happen within the same length of time.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4560 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 4 of 11 26 November 2013 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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It took me about 2 years in total, maybe 6 months to really notice a sharp improvement
from "I get the structure, but I can't decode it..." to "Wow, this makes sense!"? It means you need to consistently expose yourself to speech, use transcripts (!) and talk talk talk. I don't really have any steps, it doesn't matter how, it matters that you're doing too much writing, and too little listening and speaking. For me what helped was a month in Russia, afterwards the difference was huge. Make sure you are surrounded by speech. I used to speak Russian EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. in Russia for everything I used to do, I stayed at people's homes and in hostels. Beforehand I used to be tutored in Russian each week. I write (and wrote) messages each day. Today I have already written two longer messages, same for yesterday. It's exposure exposure exposure. Listen with transcripts first (Echo Moskvi is a good source) and then without. I read books in Russian translation. Edited by tarvos on 26 November 2013 at 5:09pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4909 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 5 of 11 26 November 2013 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||
The tongue doesn't need to touch the hard palate, it only approaches it. You probably exeggerate softness of consonants, which is normal at the beginning. Try to listen to Soviet radio and TV (recordings), you will be surprised how slowly they spoke. Here you are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPTfZyi0ius http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3JEVa5ILvk Edited by Марк on 26 November 2013 at 8:21pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fireballtrouble Triglot Senior Member Turkey Joined 4377 days ago 129 posts - 203 votes Speaks: Turkish*, French, English Studies: German | Message 6 of 11 26 November 2013 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe you are not familiar with the patterns of daily speaking that differ
significantly from the texts we read. During preparation for DELF B2 exam in French, I realized that I didn't lack the vocab but I didn't know the word that go often together. I tried to study with easy audiobooks and put myself in "parrot mode" or, say, "baby mode". But while repeating many times those sentences, I paid attention to feel the meaning, too. That's not just a sound production exercice. I talked a lot on skype with native speakers, but IMHO, what improved my listening drills wasn't that I hear natives, I think it was that I was forcing myself to build sentences and in fact I was learning to activate the passive vocab I learnt through reading&writing. May it be useful also for you. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5708 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 7 of 11 27 November 2013 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for all the kind advices. I am actually planning a 2 week trip in Russia(unfortunately, that is the longest duration I can afford to take a break from my work) Hopefully, I can do a total immersion just like what tavros did. But I would still like to polish up my listening and speaking skills, so that my time in Russia will be more worthwhile.
Here are some of the audio intensive Russian materials I have: Doroga v Rocciyu (1 - 3) Assimil (1951, 2004 and 2009) Living Language Ultimate Russian Methode 90 If I drill my listening and speaking with these materials at least once before my trip, would it be sufficient for me to interact with natives without much problems? Edited by QiuJP on 27 November 2013 at 4:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4560 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 8 of 11 27 November 2013 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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I didn't do any drilling of audio at all, and I think you would get bored more than that
it would help. I haven't intensively used more than two or three methods (Assimil's newest in English, TY and an old colloquial, and in the latter two I skipped a lot), and from then on I've only ever used Russian with people. I occasionally look things up, but I haven't looked at a textbook for like over a year now (and my comprehension was terrible up until this spring-summer). You can, if you want to, but I would rather practice with people. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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