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Rushing Russian to B1 and Beyond | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Scorpicus Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5337 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, ItalianB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 14 27 November 2011 at 5:09am | IP Logged |
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The Challenge: To take my Russian from a low A1 (if that) to a B1 in six months, and pass the corresponding TRKI 1 exam in June.
Ambitious? Certainly. Feasible? Well, possibly. I managed to do the same with French (and pass well the DELF), but French is not Russian, though nor is it Japanese either. According to CEFR you need a good 350 to 400 hours of instruction to get to B1, and with two hours of daily study over six months I'll have clocked up 360; theoretically just enough. With the time used in the right way with a good helping of old fashioned cramming in the month of the test, I think this could indeed be mission possible. If not, for sure, I'm going to have learnt a whole lot of Russian by the end of those six months, so, pass or fail, its a pretty much win-win situation. In fact, I've wanted to knuckle down to Russian for over a year, but until now I've simply not had the time to dedicate to it (yay for graduation!). About two years ago I did start Russian, but had to abandon it after a month to make room for French. I think I had about a 300 word vocab after the month, which has pretty much all evaporated since. Although I can still remember things about the grammar, I can't remember specific endings or anything so useful for actually forming a sentence (e.g. there are three genders, the unfortunate existence of cases, adjectives are annoying, adverbs are friendly etc.) Still, I'm not a complete zero - the alphabet has stuck at least (more or less). Along with French, Russian is a language I would like to eventually build towards a very high level of fluency, so this log (as long as I'm not entirely lazy in updating it!) will hopefully go far beyond this B1 challenge. My overall strategy for Russian will be to begin by focusing on vocabulary acquisition and pronunciation, then to turn to properly drilling the grammar and spelling, to finally return again to vocab acquisition. The reason for these waves of focus between vocab and grammar is that I've found it far more efficient with my other languages to concentrate on one or the other, rather then trying to figure out both vocab and grammar simultaneously. Obviously, I don't just focus exclusively on first learning vocabulary, but it is certainly my priority, leaving myself quite happy to just observe grammar rather then drilling it at first. Thus, I've somewhat developed a preference for textbooks/'tools' that are either extremely adept for learning vocabulary or extremely adept at teaching grammar, rather then courses that try to go halfway between the two. The Strategy: Focus Vocab: 1. Michel Thomas Foundation Course – Actually, I've never used MT before, but I've heard so many good things (and some negatives), I'm curious to try it. As an only 8 hour course, I'm not exactly losing time if I don't find it effective. Hopefully, it will be a good warm up for the following. 2.1 Assimil: le Russe – the newly released (and apparently much improved compared to the previous edition) French version. 2.2. Princeton Russian Course 101 – to be completed simultaneously with Assimil, and to be used in an Assimil-esque fashion. Focus Grammar: 3. Penguin Russian Course - I actually did the first few chapters of this when I started Russian a year and a half ago. 4. Schaum's Russian grammar - I really like this series, so I hope the Russian version is equally up to snuff. Focus Vocab2 5. Princeton Russian Course 105 – Back for the second part of the Princeton course. 6. Native Materials, Native Materials and More Native Materials! In the B1 race I'm probably only going to get through the first three points, but by the time I get to the end of the list, and if I can find some natives to hang out with in the mean time, I should be around B2, and happily over the muddy intermediate plateau! I'll be updating this log probably once a week on my progress, or whenever I have something mildly interesting to say. Being the mathematical person that I am, I've decided to keep track of the hours studied, and how they were spent, in a little spreadsheet. Should be interesting to compare that to the final scores on the TRKI. Anywho, if you have any comments/suggestions/other wisdom to share, I'm all ears. 3 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 2 of 14 27 November 2011 at 9:52pm | IP Logged |
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Wow- it was motivating just to read your entry! I wish you the best of luck :) I think you'll be surprised here and there by Russian/English or Russian/French cognates, which will add occasional bursts of speed to your journey. Still, since Russian is so different from the languages you study, the best way to stay motivated is to have a real-life cheerleader. Hopefully you'll find a native speaker in your hometown to practice with. If no one turns up, try interpals, busuu, or livemocha. Удачи!
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| Scorpicus Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5337 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, ItalianB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 14 30 November 2011 at 10:16am | IP Logged |
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Hi Jedimindtrick, thanks for the encouragement! Luckily for me, I'm from around the metropolitan monster that is London – I'd say there are few languages that don't have at least a handful of representatives dwelling somewhere in the city, and certainly finding Russian speakers to hang out with should not be a problem.
So, where am I so far? Getting through a CD a day, I'm now over halfway through the Michel Thomas foundation course, though I have... rather mixed feelings about the course itself. On the one hand, I definitely prefer it to Pimsleur (which I do not like at all) as it moves much faster, and the language you learn is more flexible, not just learning to parrot from a business man's phrase book. MT certainly isn't what I'd label 'a thorough beginners course', but the little it teaches you (and I think a decent amount for my, so far, four hour time commitment) is put straight into your active vocabulary through old fashioned 'here is the English phrase, translate aloud into language X' drilling. However, there are unfortunately some major draw backs. First, from the point of view of someone approaching a language for the first time, trying to fix a good accent from the start is not going to happen from MT (Pimsleur is far better in that respect). This is mainly due to the Russian you hear on the CDs only being 1/3 from a native speaker and 2/3 from the other learners, with questionable to downright bad accents. This is all part of the 'virtual classroom' setting that MT creates, whereas I'd prefer more a 'virtual private tutoring' session. At first, as the other learners are British English speakers, it seemed quite helpful to recognise traps that myself, as a British English speaker, may fall into, but very quickly their pronunciation has got more and more distracting (downright annoying, actually) when I'm trying to concentrate on reproducing the accent of the teacher. Since private lessons are always more effective than group classes, (doesn't MT agree?) I think I may edit out the other students (as well as all the non-Russian waffle) to make the program just myself and the teacher drilling the sentence structure. To do so would make the course a whole lot more compact, and in fact that is the other downside to MT. Despite it being an audio course, you don't actually listen to any Russian conversation, just isolated words and phrases (and a whole lot more English filler), meaning my comprehension skills, unless things change in the second half, are going to be pretty much nil by the end of it. For this reason, in hindsight, I wouldn't use again MT as an introduction to the passive wave of Assimil, but rather I think there may be some value in using a concentrated, stripped down version (as I'm thinking of editing for myself) as a warm up to Assimil's active wave, to get one's brain kickstarted in breaking down the wall between passive and active vocab. Perhaps, I may do this with the so-called 'advanced' course, though on the other hand perhaps my bank account will tell me not to. Anywho, as I'm having to wait for my copy of Assimil to arrive, I'll be definitely finishing off the foundation MT, cringing at (and hopefully not copying) the accents all the way. To fill up my second hour of Russian study, I've got stuck into the Princeton course, which compensates somewhat for MT as the first few lessons are crammed with notes on how to pronounce the Russian sound system correctly. Hard and soft consonants? Stressed and unstressed vowel sounds? For some strange reason, I was under the impression that Russian pronunciation was supposed to be regular. No idea where that delusion came from! Oh well, at least I can already roll my Rs (or rather Рs), so I don't have to deal with that embarrassing English speaker problem. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 14 30 November 2011 at 10:34am | IP Logged |
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You almost had me running for my Russian books just by reading your introduction. Best of luck! I will follow you closely!
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5058 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 5 of 14 30 November 2011 at 5:22pm | IP Logged |
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"For some strange reason, I was under the impression that Russian pronunciation was
supposed to be regular." What do you mean? How can pronunciation be irregular? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Scorpicus Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5337 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, ItalianB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 14 30 November 2011 at 8:26pm | IP Logged |
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Ah, by that I meant I thought Russian was phonetic. You know, one letter equals one sound, that sort of thing. Not all these shenanigans with hard/soft consonants depending on what vowel they proceed etc.
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5058 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 7 of 14 01 December 2011 at 8:08am | IP Logged |
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Then there should be at least 42 letters. I've created a thread in Русский about Russian
spelling. To my mind, Russian system is better than Irish caol le caol agus leathan le leathan, although there are complexities with sibilants in Russian (this should be changed, I think). I was talking about hard and soft consonants. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Scorpicus Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5337 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, ItalianB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 14 06 December 2011 at 3:23pm | IP Logged |
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Finished Michel Thomas Russian! Oh, false sense of achievement! After the second half of the course my opinion hasn't really changed – it's useful for basic sentence structure drilling, but not very useful for pronunciation or comprehension. I was also a bit surprised that it's in the last lesson they cover the alphabet (for a moment, I actually wondered if I had put in disc 1 by mistake), as well as disappointed that cases were never touched upon. After all, you can't have a proper foundation in Russian without even some knowledge of the accusative if you actually want to make sentences in a sane manner.
To measure how much I learned after MT I did download an A1 TRKI paper to see how much I could do. Little to say unfamiliarity with the written language and zero knowledge of cases made it way too much of a headache, and I gave up on it petty fast. But, hey, what results do you expect after 8 hours of an audio course? The good news (or rather the silver lining of bad news) is that now I've finished up my internship and flown home to rejoin the ranks of unemployed graduates, I do have plenty of time to put into Russian. Although, at the moment I'm still waiting for Assimil to arrive, but I'm still plugging away at Princeton in the meantime (lesson 9 today). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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