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Two years of intensive study: Russian | ||
Tags: Study Plan | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| SSalvestrini Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5175 days ago 33 posts - 43 votes Speaks: Italian, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 1 of 13 26 September 2010 at 2:26am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Hello everyone,
For those of you who have not read the brief introduction I posted about myself, my name is Severin and I'm a junior (11th grade) in high school. After I graduate, I'm taking a gap-year (a free 12th month period to myself) exclusively for international aid work and travel. Anyway, I really want to take the Trans-Siberian Railway from Vladivostok (in eastern Russia) to Moscow, which is a seven day trip. Something about spending an entire week in a train playing Tens and drinking tea with native Russians/fellow travels is just so appealing to me. It has been a dream for the last two years and when I decided to take a gap-year I thought I would go for it. Of course, I also want to spend time in other parts of Russia, actually experiencing the country. So my question! Realistically, in two years, intensely studying every night by myself (sometimes with a native friend probably) for one hour, will I be able to hold my own in Russia? That's a total of around 700 hours of study, but I've heard people on this board say it takes at least 5-10 years to become relatively fluent in Russian. Those of you who have learned this extremely difficult language, what do you think? Any helpful input? What resources did you use? Remember, I'm just starting. This week was my first official week of "intense" studying. Thank you all in advance! -Severin Edited by SSalvestrini on 26 September 2010 at 2:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 2 of 13 27 September 2010 at 1:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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All in all it depends on how much effort you put in, your level of dedication/perseverence and finding a method that suits your learning style: you also don't say what your intensive study routine actually consists of: what materials, how much time per day etc etc.
IMHO two years could be enough to achieve a good level of ability in Russian. I don't use the F word (fluency) on this site as people have a wide range of views what fluency actually means. The UK government used to run a year long course for linguists which achieved C1 CEFR level ability for most students, though some students were much more capable than others at the end. You should also expect occasionally to feel like you are going backwards. It seems to be normal. I have written up my anguish of hitting a brick wall after a mere 150 hours of Polish. So I took a week off. I found the key to Russian is to learn to read Cyrillic [block letters are easy enough but handscript can be hell!], do a little bit every day, 30 minutes per day is better than 3.5 hours every Sunday, vary your materials, speak out loud as soon as you can read, speak to your native buddy as soon as you are confindent, accept correction, but above all ENJOY it. I am really envious of your train trip, having been to both ends of that trip but never done the trip myself. Good luck. Send us a postcard ! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| SSalvestrini Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5175 days ago 33 posts - 43 votes Speaks: Italian, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 3 of 13 28 September 2010 at 1:36am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thank you so much, maydayayday, for that detailed response!
Since I just started I have yet to receive the resources I ordered, but for the last week I've been working on the alphabet (I have it memorized, but I can't read very fast). I'll take your advice regarding handscript to heart, as both of my good Russian friends say that no one in Russia writes in block letters. What would be a good way to practice this though, other than having my friends constantly writing me things? In regards to the trip, it has always been of great interest to me. In addition to Russia, I'll also be spending some time in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia- Eastern Europe in general I guess. Hopefully Russian will be a stepping stone to the latter languages. Anyway, materials! Based on the recommendations of others on this bored, I will be purchasing the New Penguin Russian Course and Langenscheidt Grundwortschatz Russisch (a Russian-German frequency dictionary). I've also been using the Michel Thomas Introductory Russian course over the last two days, and will hopefully finish it, along with the advanced course, in a few months. Do you have any suggestions for materials? Thanks again! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| SSalvestrini Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5175 days ago 33 posts - 43 votes Speaks: Italian, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 4 of 13 28 September 2010 at 1:38am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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P.S. Does anyone have the Linkword Russian program? I have the Spanish, Italian, and
French ones which I really like. Perhaps we could trade :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 5 of 13 28 September 2010 at 5:20am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Let me suggest that until you have audio confirmation, you do not read Russian based on the Cyrillic "equivalents." It is not phonetic, and accent position (which determines pronunciation of many unstressed vowels) is unpredictable. I think reading aloud and even reading text silently is not a good idea unless the language is practically 100% phonetic, but even in Spanish I see some things that are not quite phonetic and that I would learn incorrectly if it weren't for audio. Regarding handwriting, probably just go online, look for some letters by "famous people" in the handwritten form and the typed transcript, and from that see how people "practically" write their cursive. Then practice it yourself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 6 of 13 28 September 2010 at 5:26am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I've known the Cyrillic alphabet for a long time, but I just learned the cursive forms last week. What I did was I printed off a sheet with demonstrations of all of the letters in cursive and a list of words (or a text in Russian from Wikipedia would work too) and slowly tried to transliterate all of it. By the time I finished I had practiced most of the letters enough to be able to write them confidently. If you're still needing practice, just try the same exercise with another text. By the way, I also learned the Georgian alphabet (and hiragana and the Arabic alphabet to an extent) this way.
Russian should help you with Bulgarian and Croatian (and any other Slavic languages), but won't be much help for Romanian or Hungarian other than some loanwords. Romanian is a Romance language with some Slavic influence (mainly in pronunciation and some vocabulary), so your Spanish will probably actually be of more help. Hungarian isn't even Indo-European, so the most Russian will give you for that is a few words (I'm not sure how many Slavic loanwords there are in Hungarian though) and the concept of cases, although several of them are used much differently in Hungarian.
I'd recommend the 1991 version of Teach Yourself Russian and Cortina Method Russian. For a frequency vocabulary book, I would also recommend this book, which lists the 5000 most common Russian words (but in alphabetical order, so it also can work as a small dictionary) with all of their inflected forms. For nouns and adjectives, this means that you get the singular and plural in all six cases, and for verbs you get all the conjugated forms for all tenses and aspects. It's really nice!
If you take advantage of times when you normally aren't doing anything, this could be significantly quicker. I like to listen to MT while I'm riding my bike, walking, on the bus, doing mindless homework assignments, and other "idle" times that could easily be put to use. The beginning course is only eight hours long and the advanced one is only five hours, so it's actually possible to complete the whole thing in one day (but I wouldn't recommend it). Edited by ellasevia on 28 September 2010 at 5:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 7 of 13 28 September 2010 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Short answer: yes. I'd say I studied less than that, and I can "hold my own" (however vague an expression that is) in Japanese, which could easily take twice as long as Russian (according to the US Dept of Defence). It's impossible for any of us to know how long you can keep such a study regimen going, but if you persist, you will succeed. If you have a native friend, make him your witness to your commitment and make sure you are accountable -- ensure that any slacking off will cause immediate shame ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6230 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 8 of 13 28 September 2010 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I took Russian in college and I found Dawson and Humesky's Modern Russian 1 and 2 far better than anything we studied in class. Look under DLI links opn this site for the DLI course as well. Both have tons of audio practice!
Sadly, I think Modern Russian is out of print but I bet you could find it on uztranslations. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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