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Decoding the Riddle, Mystery, and Enigma | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5058 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 65 of 92 21 February 2012 at 1:59pm | IP Logged |
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Can anyone tell me- is there a difference between "Кто-то хочет прочесть?" and "Кто-то
хочет прочитать?" No, because there is no difference between прочесть и прочитать. ЗамолчУ, госТЯ, выбор. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5221 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 66 of 92 16 March 2012 at 8:01pm | IP Logged |
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February wasn't a month for hitting the books but I do think my Russian has improved slightly....or at least, not regressed. The big change I made in my habits was to finally admit (at work, during class) a desire to learn Russian. I'd always been on the fence about this- should you teach solely in the target language or is it okay to translate a word here and there for students even if you're not a fluent speaker? In the end, stress and a low salary decided that it would be beneficial to combine me teaching students English with students teaching me some Russian. It's not the focus of class, of course, but letting the students teach back has been pretty cool so far. Every now and then we'll do a bilingual vocab challenge or I'll practice Russian with them during the break or something like that. It means I've gone from sometimes 99% no-Russian days (so sad when living in Ukraine!) to more-often-than-not-a-little-Russian days.
As for March, I've done two things- 1) open a vkontakte account and 2) started tracking how often I study. I'd like to use vkontakte 100% in Russian but as of now I'm settling for using English while posting in both languages. The tracking is really simple. There's a big pile of Russian textbooks that I lugged over here but haven't been using, so any time I even open the book I make a little x in my planner. It's motivating to watch those x's pile up and once the book is open I usually find energy to do a little something in the book. Unfortunately no Холотсяк lately, but did watch a couple minutes of Maksim Chmerkovskiy's new show- куб, a game show where people do weird stuff in a giant cube- and was really happy to find that I could understand most of the dialog on the first listen. Success! Happy studies to all other language learners out there! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5221 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 67 of 92 20 June 2012 at 7:20pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, summer already!... and I've spent almost an entire year in Ukraine. I wish I had taken a language test last August so that I could have something to measure myself against.
At the moment my studies are going okay. Anki has proven to be a lifesaver (again!) and I still occasionally challenge my students to quick vocab competitions in class. Some cool new words:
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5221 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 68 of 92 28 July 2012 at 12:44pm | IP Logged |
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Lately friends have been getting on my case. "You've been here almost a year, you should already be speaking fluent Russian!" or "You're so close, all you need is just to stop using English." It doesn't feel like I'm that close. It feels like I'm a bit better: larger range of vocabulary, better at understanding, but still nothing more than an intermediate-level speaker. This has made me feel like a big failure: am I really so lazy that even when this dream (of living abroad) came true, I still couldn't get my act together enough to truly commit to the language?! What kind of fool would waste an opportunity like that?
Then I watched Luca's video and read his article "Is living in-country strictly necessary to learn a foreign language?" First off, this man is a HUGE inspiration! I've been following him on-and-off for a while. I use one of his multi-lingual videos in my classes and always, at the end of the class, a couple of students come up to me with this excited gleam in their eyes and want to discuss polyglottery further. Just like some people admire star athletes, it's good for language-learners to have a champion to look up to. Anyways, the video is about speaking fluently vs. speaking like a native-speaker. He makes a good point: "if your goal is to speak a language fluently, to use it as a tool for communication, then it is not strictly necessary to live in a given country." Vice versa, while living in a country may get you to a native-speaker level, it's a mistake to assume that this is automatic. In fact, it takes almost as much hard work as it would living in your own country. I and most people in my life assumed that just living here would make me a better Russian-speaker. Not true. The saddest fact of my life is that I am not a language sponge after all. People tend to seek out their comfort zones and like an idiot I knew this before even coming here but still let it happen. In the states many of the students in my citizenship classes had lived in America for years (5 years, 10 years, 15 years+) and still didn't speak English beyond "Hello. My name is..." Why not? Because they barricaded themselves within their linguistic community, the same thing I've done here. It turns out that learning a language beyond the basics is much harder than I thought! Another good point was made in this article (it's one of my favorite ever articles)- Myth #1: The best way to learn a foreign language is to go to a foreign country. Friends tend to be so impressed by whatever you do know that they don't correct your biggest mistakes. The last time you heard a foreigner speaking your language, did you correct their mistakes or did you say "Wow! Good job!" to encourage them? It hasn't all been a loss though. The biggest bonus that has come from living in this country is that now I understand cultural references, hear the hit songs, and overall get a good exposure to popular culture. Sometimes that is something we forget about if we just study the language academically- it's not just being able to speak, it's also- do you know about the most recent political scandal? Do you know the nursery rhymes that every single child knows? Can you quote from the most popular cult classic films? Can you rattle off a list of the most famous singers of the 1990s? And so on.... You can speak the language perfectly but if you don't understand cultural references, you'll always be an outsider. At least that (pop culture) is one department I haven't been slacking in. On very rare occasions I even understand a reference to something that my (native-Russian-speaking) boyfriend doesn't! One helpful habit I've fallen into is using vkontakte. Do any of you Russian-studying readers use this site? Even though I guilty switched the user language to English, the items posted by friends in the update feed are all in Russian. I read through the newest updates every day or two. They're short and usually funny and it's a pleasure to look through them. Here's something cool I saw posted today: Как прожить на одну зарплату Check it out- it's great Russian vocab practice! Edited by jedimindtrick on 28 July 2012 at 12:49pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5221 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 69 of 92 12 August 2012 at 8:54pm | IP Logged |
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Inspired by the massive organized awesomeness of
Rhadryn's and ellasevia's language logs, I've started tracking my study efforts. The biggest surprise? Realizing that before this I hadn't been studying at all. Seriously, not at all. Just reading street signs and calling it a day. http://goo.gl/IhSk1 Week 1 2 hours *completed the lesson for Кого принесла машина времени? *learned the lyrics for такого как Путин and наш народ *read an article on how Ukrainians use language *watched an episode of холостяк Week 2 2 hours, 20 minutes *watched another episode of холостяк *completed the Russian Reading Test at the Online Diagnostic Assessment System *did about 1/2 of the the Russian Listening Test on the same website *one long-postponed Anki review The Online Diagnostic Assessment System is pretty cool. I'd always wanted to take a serious Russian test and get some feedback and this site did exactly that, and for free! It looks like it's mainly designed for military personnel but I was still allowed to set up an account and take the tests. The tests were not easy but they've inspired me to keep going so that I can return and do even better. Edited by jedimindtrick on 12 August 2012 at 9:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5221 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 70 of 92 20 August 2012 at 10:41am | IP Logged |
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Week 3
Russian: 2.5 hours total 6 hours, 50 minutes Latin: 1 hour *reviewed Anki twice *watched the first 20 minutes of брат 2 *finished 2 units on busuu.com *after running into the phrase в багдаде все спокойно (all is quiet in Baghdad, the watchman's refrain from an old Soviet movie) in Anki, found and studied the lyrics for Кар-Мэн's song в багдаде все спокойно I'm not sure about busuu.com. When I first started using it I was swayed by its coolness and thought "This is the key to everything!"... and quickly discovered that it is not. Flashy, yes, but this week I spent more time wandering around it and browsing people's profiles than actually studying. Also, I had been stuck at the same lesson (expressing oneself) for about 6 months, trying to memorize everything in it. This week I just threw up my hands and finished the lesson. Turns out the next one- internet- is a lot more useful and wasn't as difficult. I want to keep using busuu but will have to control the time I spend on it to make sure it's not wasted time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jedimindtrick Diglot Groupie United States 8monthsinukrain Joined 5221 days ago 90 posts - 119 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian | Message 71 of 92 26 August 2012 at 10:02pm | IP Logged |
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Week 4
Russian: 3 hours, 40 minutes (total: 10.5 hours) Latin: 1 hour (total: 2 hours) *continued with Busuu and finished several new units *reviewed Anki once *viewed Parental Guidance and did the accompanying activities *tried listening to/reading a couple articles at the Russian Language Mentor *read a blog post about the top 10 slang words used by Russian political bloggers *browsed through the activities on RIA Novosti *completed activities 1-17 of Russian Holidays on Russnet *watched more of Брат 2 I'm beginning to look forward to studying. And since my vacation (or rather, uh, staycation) is starting, I plan to keep at it :) The articles at Russian Language Mentor were really difficult to read. The ones on Russnet gave me a little bit of hope though... it's one of the first times I've actually been able to read and understand something in Russian! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 72 of 92 26 August 2012 at 10:07pm | IP Logged |
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I use VKontakte not just to read updates (yes, it's in English for me too) but also to
chat with people in Russian. Two for one. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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