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Trans-Siberian Express | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5559 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 17 of 55 12 June 2011 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Trans-Siberian Express: Yaroslavl (284 km)
Already half a dozen hours into my Russian literary journey, I'm ready to report from my first virtual stop in Yaroslavl, the city where Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, went to school. Ura! 
[Яросла́вль (Yaroslavl): "the Church of St. John the Baptist (pictured here) also appears on the 1000 ruble banknote."] Listening and reading is no easy ride in the beginning: partly because I need to get used to processing Russian at the same speed as the narrator, and partly due to my embarrassing lack of vocabulary. Reading the English translation in advance is a big help here though, as it enables me to follow the plot with just the help of a few pointers here and there. Yet on the whole, I still feel a little lost: more like a mere speck, as seen from above, in a vast ocean of foreign words, bobbing up and down on the waves with Cyrillic flowing in and out of focus. I keep having to remind myself at this stage to keep the faith and not panic - it's only very early days... With limited resources at the moment, I've decided to try and get more out of each book by listening and reading twice through, once in tandem with English, and then just with the audiobook. Maybe I'll quickly give up on this idea out of the frustration of having to repeat each story 3 times in all (especially in longer novels), but it's worth seeing if the positive feeling that comes from understanding the text better on a successive reading outweighs the negatives. So far I've gone through two waves of listening and reading with "The Little Prince", and am already several chapters into "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". As predicted, I found "The Little Prince" a lot easier to understand the second time around (final reading score: 96%), which really lit up my day. The rest of the Russian Harry Potter collection is on its way from Grant and Cutler, so every time the letterbox rattles, my heart leaps in hopeful anticipation like a wee waking bairn on Christmas morn. 
[Yaroslavl on the map: "first stop on my virtual journey."] Today's reading test results: 81% (+1%) [first 100 words taken from "Дневной Дозор", Часть третья, Глава 2, стр. 566) Distance from the next station, Kirov: 574 km. Edited by Teango on 12 June 2011 at 5:14pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5970 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 55 12 June 2011 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love that snail icon! I feel just like that myself, lately.
I like your railroad journey idea so much I want to copy it. But I am not so expansive in my ideas. There's a little railroad ride in NJ, 2.7 miles long, and it's the shortest regularly scheduled route in the US. It takes all of four minutes to complete. It's called "the Dinky!" This might be the ride for me. But I think I will venture into a Slavic language myself next year. By then you'll be experienced enough to be my guide! My language might be Polish, though. If you doubt that the Dinky actually exists, here's proof: It's the Dinky! I went to school only a few miles away from here, but, sadly, I never rode the Dinky. Great minds ride the Dinky. Einstein took the Dinky. I've written an unfortunate syllogism here, I think: Great minds ride the Dinky. I have not been on the Dinky. Therefore: I have a small mind. Getting off topic here, but again I love this idea of your Russian train ride and you are seriously tempting me to give the language a try! Keep up the good work! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| supertom Diglot Groupie Joined 4997 days ago 87 posts - 114 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 19 of 55 13 June 2011 at 12:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Great going Teango! Those reading scores are already very good!
A question, how do you actually do those reading scores? As I did my LR experiment, I didn't read any Spanish, just listened to it and read along in English. So my guess is that my reading isn't very good yet (but it should catch on pretty quickly as listening should be way more difficult than reading). And because of that, I fear that doing a reading test to gauge my progress is going to discourage me.. So actually my question is twofold. 1. How do you do those reading tests. For example, if you guess the verb right, but not the ending (so you know the word is walking, but didn't know that the form in that sentence meant walked), you you count it as good or as fault? 2. What do you do to get better in reading. As you said you listened to the audio once while reading along in English and after that listened to the audio once without any aid. Maby I am missing something, but I read this as that you don't read in Russian while doing LR. Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5467 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 21 of 55 13 June 2011 at 10:30am | IP Logged | ||
And the city where I spent six very happy, and it has to be said, very drunken, months. It's a wonderful place - you should go for real if you ever get the chance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5559 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 22 of 55 13 June 2011 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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@meramarina
Glad you liked the little snail icon, but don't be deceived, he's faster than he looks. I haven't dreamt up a good name for him yet and am open to suggestions. For the time being I just call him Uli - short for улитка (snail) and Ulrich, as well as a patronymic ending in Tatar names. If I'm ever over in New Jersey, I'm definitely buying a ticket for the "Dinky" (great name). For some reason it reminds me of the cute Nerobergbahn I rode in Wiesbaden. I've also been on the steam railway they used for filming Harry Potter up in Yorkshire, and would thoroughly recommend it if you're ever in this part of the world - old trains are wonderful! @supertom Big congratulations once again on achieving 50 hours of LR over just 10 days! As for my reading scores, they're just very basic estimates, so I don't take them at face value. I just read a selection of words from an adult level book I've never read before, and then use my clicker counter to tally any words I don't know or get wrong. This includes grammatical errors, such as mistaking "walked" for "walks". However I'm a bit of a hard taskmaster on myself, so it's probably best to go with whatever makes you feel more comfortable and once you're ready. I'm lucky with Russian, as I have a native Russian speaker to check everything whilst I try and translate the passage into English. To recap on how I listen and read in this project: 1. I read a chapter in English. 2. Then read the same chapter in Russian whilst listening to the Russian audio simultaneously. 3. Once I've completed all the chapters in each book, back-to-back, I read and listen to it all again in Russian only (no English to help me this time) to consolidate what I've learned and hopefully see some progress too. Having acquired enough basic vocabulary and grammar to grasp the gist of simple stories, I'm now interested in finding out where listening and reading in Russian only will bring me (once I have a handle on the plot in advance). This differs from the purer system advocated by Atamagaii, which is excellent for getting your listening skills amongst other things up to scratch. Hence, I'm not using parallel texts this time around, nor listening to Russian audiobooks whilst reading English at the same time. This means my reading ability will probably take the lead for a while, but I hope to address the balance with plenty of active listening and conversation further down the road. @Winnie Thanks, just my little attempt to brighten up the place. And I'm betting here that your English (and Russian) is probably already very good. ;) @TixhiiDon I'd love to go one day...you've sold me on the idea now! Edited by Teango on 13 June 2011 at 6:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6360 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French | Message 24 of 55 15 June 2011 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Hey, what about this - we do it for real when we both have reached upper basic fluency in Russian? :) I'm soon finished with Мастер и Маргарита. A true masterpiece, I'm speechless. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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