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| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6482 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes  Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 25 of 42 08 July 2011 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Eighth and ninth weeks: More instrumental case, свой, and review of the cases!
Princeton lessons 69-72, Sara story 14-15 This past week has been mainly vocab: a lot of food (including dishes I've never heard of, like борщ and щи) and education/career oriented words. I looked ahead a bit and realized that soon I'll be able to tell time and compare the quality of two things. Exciting! I may have said this before, but I love talking with a Czech friend of mine about similarites between Russian and Czech - the grammar is similar and the two languages share a lot of vocabulary. It's just that the Czech use a modified Roman alphabet, for some reason... Edited by 236factorial on 09 July 2011 at 1:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6482 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 26 of 42 10 July 2011 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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While catching on some writing exercises in the course (at the end of each lesson, there's a written assignment, which I've been a little lazy with because I'm always really eager to move on to the next lesson), I found that I had pretty much no memory of the Imperative. However, this was probably expected since I did this lesson on 5 hours of sleep and after 7 hours of traveling in a bus/train. So, I spent some time learning how to form commands again.
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| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4998 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 27 of 42 10 July 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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How do you check the exercises? I mean if you did them correctly or not.
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| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6482 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 28 of 42 10 July 2011 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | ||
This is one of the weaknesses of the Princeton Russian course (the greatest, in my opinion, and perhaps why I tend to slack off on the written exercises). There isn't a formal "key"; occassionally answers are provided but very rarely. You just have to trust that you learned the stuff correctly. Often, you can find the answers in the text, since the exercises are usually heavily based on what is covered in the lessons (in fact, a few of the translations are taken directly from the examples), but for other exercises, faith is the best bet. Or a Russian friend. I actually have a few questions that I will be posting later. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6482 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 42 13 July 2011 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Two-month milestone (Week 9, Part II): Time, dates, and comparisons
Princeton lessons 73-76, Sara Story 16 The two-month mark has come and gone, and these past few days have been filled with important concepts. The comparisons took a little while to absorb (especially all those irregular ones, like чище and тоньше). However, I guess that English is not much better with its arbitrary rules of whether you can add -er or not. Telling time and dates is nice, although it involved a thorough review of numbers that I desperately needed. Currently, I'm having the most trouble with times like 4:45, where 30<minutes<60. This is most likely because I'm not used to forming the Genitive of cardinal numbers, and things get pretty irregular form-wise. I'll definitely be reviewing these lessons frequently, although I can probably practice time concepts quite easily too. For example, when I'm bored in lab, I can look at the lab clock... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6482 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 30 of 42 15 July 2011 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was just looking at the test for the basic level of the TORFL (like TOEFL, except in Russian), and the test is mad intense (2 days long?!?!). I can't really understand all the instructions, although I can do the questions anyway (for fill-in-the-blanks and reading comprehension, it's not difficult to figure out what to do). I figured out about 90% of the words in one of the passages, although a lot of that other 10% seemed quite critical and I can't say that I completely got the nuances of the reading.
I might be looking at the sample test a bit more later on for some more practice - I'm sure that the questions will draw my attention to words and grammar that I looked over while speeding through the Princeton Russian course (I'm on lesson 78 now!). BTW: I don't plan to take the TORFL, at least not for the next few years, because I hear that it's only offered in Russia and I'm not going there anytime soon. Also, it would be practically useless, except for personal satisfaction (that is, I don't intend to enroll in a degree program at a Russian university or work in Russia). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6482 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 31 of 42 16 July 2011 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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So... call me childish, but I've started watching preschool Russian videos. More specifically, this morning I couldn't fall asleep and I was just searching random Russian stuff on youtube, and I suddenly found this Russian TV series - Лунтик! It's for very young children, and it's sooooo cute. There's also plenty of simple conversation (unlike Ну погоди, another cartoon that someone else referred me to), which I think will greatly help my listening comprehension. It seems like there are a lot of episodes (400??), so this will keep me busy for some time.
This will be a great supplement to my studies - does anyone know if there are transcripts for the episodes? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6482 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 32 of 42 17 July 2011 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today, I spent some time organizing the Princeton Russian material - I have a binder filled with course material, but it has long overflowed and I had been throwing the older papers in a random corner of my closet. I got a new 2" binder, in which I put all the old lessons (ca. lessons 1-60), and then did some arranging: for example, I put all the review lessons (which summarizes all the grammar points covered in the Unit) and vocab lists together so that I have a handy reference when I need it.
I'm wondering whether I should create a "master list" of vocab, arranged in alphabetical order. This will make it easier to track what words I've learned, but it may take forever to create. Should have begun it sooner... Week 10, Part I: Verbs of motion, тот же (самый) Princeton lessons 77-79, Sara story 17-18 Finally, I've cleared up some confusion about how to say "go" in Russian: although I still am not perfect at distinguishing the "determined" and "nondetermined" forms, at least I can appreciate why this "go" and that "go" translate differently in Russian. One other thing that I've gotten much clearer is time expressions. One particularly confusing tidbit was the difference between "I drove to Canada (and stayed there) for two hours" and "I drove two hours to Canada". It seems like in the first sentence, one needs на before the "two hours" and in the second, "two hours" is used alone in the Accusative case. I found the explanation on this website and it finally cleared up why sometimes a "на" would show up. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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