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Russian: reaching a decent reading level | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| blauw Tetraglot Groupie Belgium Joined 5377 days ago 46 posts - 111 votes  Speaks: English, Flemish*, French, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 9 05 January 2014 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi,
As part of my New Year's resolutions for 2014, I've decided to really buckle down and get my Russian up to a level where I can start reading native materials without too much difficulty. For those of you who have been there, how would you recommend one go about reaching that level as efficiently as possible? Right now, I'm steadily working my way through Assimil (the 2011 edition, unfortunately - would it be a wise investment to take my friend's copy of the 1992 A. Cherel edition off his hands?), and I'd like to start L/R-ing the first Harry Potter book. Unfortunately, I only have time to do L/R on weekends, and I've heard this is a method to which one should try and devote many consecutive hours each day. Is this a realistic study plan if I want to obtain a good reading level? Is there anything you would recommend I do differently or as a supplement to what I'm already doing? Thanks for your time! Edited by blauw on 05 January 2014 at 8:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4712 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 9 05 January 2014 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Learning to read Russian well takes a while. In my experience you just have to devote
hours and hours to it, just like you're doing right now. I can get the gist of novels at my current level (even though I have to skip some descriptions) because Russian vocabulary, when it's unknown, is not as guessable as for a Germanic or Romance language. Be prepared to slog and slog hard. However getting comfortable with the spoken lingo takes somewhat less time in my experience. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| blauw Tetraglot Groupie Belgium Joined 5377 days ago 46 posts - 111 votes Speaks: English, Flemish*, French, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 9 05 January 2014 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks, Tarvos! Can I ask how you got to the level you're at right now?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4712 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 9 05 January 2014 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Lots of hard work and graft. I did a lot of online chatting and conversing and I spent a
month in Russia. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| blauw Tetraglot Groupie Belgium Joined 5377 days ago 46 posts - 111 votes Speaks: English, Flemish*, French, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 9 05 January 2014 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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What I really meant to ask is how - what specific method have people used to learn how to read Russian. I'm perfectly willing to invest vast amounts of time and effort, I'm just having a hard time figuring out the type of effort needed.
For example, I tried L/R for the first time today, and I don't feel like I learned anything. There's just so many unknown words, and they go by so fast I can't imagine I'll every learn them this way. Is that normal? Or am I trying this too soon, do I need to learn more vocabulary first? My overall goal is to acquire grammar and especially vocabulary in as natural and painless way as I can. I don't mind if it takes a long time, I just want to make sure my time is not wasted. Edited by blauw on 05 January 2014 at 10:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6914 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 9 05 January 2014 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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The idea is that you can indeed do LR as a beginner (but you'll have to do several rounds with same text/audio to get the most out of it). But I know how you feel, I've done LR with "The Little Prince" (in Chinese) half a dozen times without feeling that I gained that much. Maybe with another book, and another language...
One of the threads from the era when both our administrator and professor Arguelles were active: Russian - advancing to reading literature (20 March 2005) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4712 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 7 of 9 05 January 2014 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||
I didn't use a lot of rigorous methodology. I used a few graded readers, some textbooks, Anki to learn vocabulary in the beginning. But even when I didn't have the vocabulary to read texts, I had the vocabulary to talk. So I have conversed a lot and picked up new vocabulary that way. I have never done LR in a systematic way and I have no guarantees for optimization. I can't help you with that. I simply worked hard, learned new words and read books as it came. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5733 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 8 of 9 06 January 2014 at 11:24am | IP Logged | ||
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If you haven't finished Assimil yet, I would recommend concentrating on that first. Assimil doesn't take you to a high level, it's a good foundation really, so it would be good to internalize the course well, before moving to native materials. Of course, you should still listen to some real Russian, try reading the Internet in Russian, etc, but as a side thing. After you're done with Assimil, you can find some more advanced book (maybe Living Language, I had it for French and it's really solid) and concentrate on native materials.
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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