|
 |
Do Russians find English difficult? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6493 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 9 of 28 16 March 2010 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
For us articles really seem redundant, as dantalian correctly noticed. That's because in Russian it's the words order that expresses the definiteness. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5435 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 10 of 28 16 March 2010 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
This seems to be normal for language lessons at schools in every country. I grew up in East Germany in the 70s and 80s and had to take Russian classes for 6 years. After that I had a repertoire of 1 sentence -- the only one I ever really needed: Я забыл домашние задания. When I took up Russian again three months ago I had to start from scratch. And apart from cursive writing there is nothing that comes back quickly, which means that I really never knew anything. Language lessons at schools as I know them are just a waste of time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6437 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 11 of 28 17 March 2010 at 4:23am | IP Logged | |||||
It's "The very concept of an article." 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nadia Triglot Groupie Russian Federation Joined 5514 days ago 50 posts - 98 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: Hindi | Message 12 of 28 17 March 2010 at 6:52am | IP Logged | |||||
Uh-huh. The notion of definiteness (?) does exist in Russian as well, and it's expressed either by word order or words like "какой-то"/some. For example: A car drove up to the house. -- К дому подъехала машина. The car drove up to the house. -- Машина подъехала к дому. A boy rushed into the room. -- В комнату вбежал мальчик. The boy rushed into the room. -- Мальчик вбежал в комнату. The thing with articles is that it's not enough to know the simple rule as there seems to be a whole lot more to articles/absense thereof, all which you have to learn gradually -- not even learn so much as get used to, while reading and so on. It's not so very difficult after all -- provided you have the time and desire to learn -- but I've a feeling that mistakes are inevitable however much you learn.
Good one. :) Yes, I agree about the schools -- it's the same everywhere. Everything depends on the motivation to study later. But adults mostly don't have time enough to be able to really delve into a language. I was tutoring a woman for about 2,5 years but she could really give up only very little time to English as she had other hobbies besides English, and her job, of course. The results of such meagre studying were... well, meagre. She still didn't speak fluently after these years, couldn't understand spoken speech, and didn't feel confident about speaking and listening, though she felt more confident with reading and there was some improvement after all. It all depends on the person, naturally. I basically agree with Teango that the closer languages are, the easier they are to learn. And regarding Russians who know English and claim it was quite easy enough -- either they really have capabilities for languages and don't notice other people who don't, or they just forgot how difficult it was at the beginning. I never found English difficult but I always saw that I was among the few who didn't (as pompous as it sounds). Edited by nadia on 17 March 2010 at 7:08am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 13 of 28 17 March 2010 at 7:37am | IP Logged | |||||
Do you have any idea why? You write English quite well (your English throughout the proceeding post sounded plausibly native to me). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dagojr Groupie United States Joined 5589 days ago 56 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 14 of 28 17 March 2010 at 8:56am | IP Logged | |||||
|
On a somewhat related note...
I think Russian speakers who try to communicate with English speakers, especially with Americans, often have difficulty because of the way they are taught. I've spoken with three Russian speakers who now live in America, and I've asked them a little bit about what it was like learning English. All three of them came to America very confident in their English-speaking ability, and all three were frustrated after arriving at their inability to understand English! First, they are usually taught formal, "proper" English. So when people speak informally, they'll be speaking in a way that a typical Russian speaker will be completely unfamiliar with. One told me that we "just make up words" over here. =p Second, typically they learn British English rather than American English. Sure, the differences between American and British English are small, but when you're dealing with a completely foreign language, it's another obstacle to overcome. Lastly, one of them complained about the regional language differences. Go to California, go to Texas, go to North Carolina, go to Boston, and everybody talks differently. She found it very difficult to get used to all of the regional accents in the US. The thing about all of the above three points is that they each on some level have little to do with the inherent difficulty that a Russian speaker would have learning English. They have much more to do with the way the language was taught. If Russian speakers were exposed to many more informal situations and different accents, I think many of them would speak English much better than they currently do. Edited by dagojr on 17 March 2010 at 8:59am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| nadia Triglot Groupie Russian Federation Joined 5514 days ago 50 posts - 98 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: Hindi | Message 15 of 28 17 March 2010 at 10:16am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you. :) I still notice mistakes in my posts quite often, esp. when it comes to articles. English is my profession, though -- I'm a teacher of English though I work as a translator. I've spent years and years learning it so I just know how much work it takes. I can tell a student that there exists, say, a construction, like "It takes sb N hours to do smth" (which is something that is expressed quite differently in Russian). Then I can give examples, like "It took me three hours to get there". Or vice versa -- example first, and only then the rule. We may then do some exercises (though as there are hundreds of such constructions, it's a bit impractical). But the trick is, all this most likely won't help them to actually internalise it and use it. What they must do is take down a book and see this and many other such phrases actually used in interesting, meaningful contexts, over and over again. And students generally just don't do it. So that's why teaching is so frustrating for me personally -- because the result of my work doesn't eventually depend only on me -- and that's why I don't do it. The only thing that makes learning English a bit easier for Russins is the abundance of materials, especially now. Films with subs in English are a great help, and songs in English pretty much dominate the radio waves, so that's something. Plus, a great emphasis on the necessity of learning it and economical/practical reasons.
Yes, well, it's all true but how do you actually accomplish this in a formal schoolroom environment? At my school we only had 2-3 hours of English per week. As I said, when we were finishing school a lot of my classmates couldn't even read transcription, which means they couldn't look up a word in a dictionary and have any idea what it sounded like. They wouldn't understand slow, distinct speech. Understanding accents is something that comes next. Talking about distinguishing accents in such a situation is... well, it's funny. Of course, times are changing, it's mostly foreign textbooks which are now in use but I've had practice in schools at the uni, and I can tell you it makes no difference. A lot is asked of students, like understanding sufficiently fluent English spoken by natives, they just don't understand anything at all, except for a couple of bright heads in the class. And little changes at the university level, for those who go there. Edited by nadia on 17 March 2010 at 10:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| arkady Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States rightconditi Joined 5400 days ago 54 posts - 61 votes Speaks: English*, Russian* Studies: German | Message 16 of 28 17 March 2010 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I can tell you based on my entire family that it is very hard. Words like 'the', 'an', 'a' are never every properly used even after 10,15,20 years of English usage. I have no problem with them because I came here when I was 8, but the older generation will forever suffer with this and it appears to be impossible to eradicate. Maybe some specific courses can stamp this out, but I have yet to see anything.
In fact I would gladly buy anything that would work so that I can reduce mom's concern of her English. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
