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Staying motivated in Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Kimchizzle Diglot Newbie United States Joined 3429 days ago 24 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 4 16 July 2015 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I started learning Russian a month ago, trying to focus mostly only on reading and listening comprehension. I'm using the learning with texts program and the method Krashen popularized of lots of reading and listening input with less focus on grammar. Recently I began using RussianMadeEasy podcast as well. I've been surprised at my progress with this method so far, although I don't think I would've made nearly the same progress without having already learned a foreign language previously. It's a neat feeling beginning to understand grammar patterns even though you aren't studying them directly, just by pattern recognition alone.
Lately though, I've begun getting a bit bored of what content I'm learning and my motivation is falling. Krashen and Steve Kaufman always mention comprehensible input and content and not too much that you don't understand too fast. I've been going through a lesson series type thing that sort of uses knowledge from previous lessons for newer lessons in a cumulative approach. It has helped me learn but it's just that I'm getting bored, and I want to learn more faster. Recently I looked at La Russie sans peine online to see how much I had learned comparatively and I could understand in reading up to around lesson 12 or 13. The lesson program I've currently been using took 40 lessons to get to the same level of understanding, so the pace is slower. What are good ways to stay motivated and continue learning at a steady and consistent pace as before? I'm interested in being able to understand Russian news and politics as well as interviews and history by listening and reading, also movies and music. If I could get to around a B2 level of Russian in listening and reading, I would be quite happy. Any suggestions for motivation in the areas I want to focus? I would just try listening with texts for interviews or politics but I know their would be so much that I don't understand, I would forget everything as soon as I learned it. The program I'm currently on is building my knowledge bit by bit and understanding grammar based on patterns, which is really helpful for a beginner like me, but it is just becoming boring, the slow pace. Edited by Kimchizzle on 16 July 2015 at 10:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7166 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 4 16 July 2015 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Try comic strips although I wouldn't start using these until I felt sufficiently comfortable with the basics.
The illustrations may help you understand the speech/thought bubbles if words are unfamiliar or you just can't tease out the meaning of a derivative... and they're short and usually funny enough that it won't feel like a chore to read a few of them. Here's a site with some translations to Russian of Garfield and Dilbert and another site of Garfield translated to Russian (for this second site, click on the calendar on the left to pick a strip from a certain day. Clicking on the dice on the right will bring up a day's strip at random). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4717 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 3 of 4 18 July 2015 at 9:56am | IP Logged | ||
What's the easiest to understand? Texts and interactions in context. Where do you find those? With actual people. Where do you have to practice? With actual people. Keep goin' and truckin'. If what you're doing isn't working, try the opposite approach. Maybe it will work for you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6607 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 4 15 August 2015 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | ||
It depends :P Seems like some are comfortable when people go out of the way to help them understand/don't zone out so easily. I just tend to get embarrassed, even if the person is all friendly and wonderful. Especially if they're friendly and wonderful and wasting their energy on me. Hate the feeling. I generally do my best to get to a good level in listening, so that the person didn't have to go out of their way. (in terms of MBTI, I don't feel as comfortable with the sensory, physical context as tarvos does. for me it's better if there are actual rules/expectations, like in sports or in a standard narrative. Rather than a million of possibilities. because the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense :D) Edited by Serpent on 15 August 2015 at 2:20pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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