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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Jerrod Senior Member United States Joined 6343 days ago 168 posts - 176 votes  Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 1 of 21 12 February 2007 at 1:25pm | IP Logged |
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Hello everyone. I am new here and new to learning languages. I posted a question about what people self study once they are past the basics of Russian and no one responded. Thus, I will post here every week what I am doing and how I feel about it. Please, PLEASE, offer any advice, critisms, or general encouragement. Questions, of course, are also welcome.
Background: I have studied two years of Russian at the university. My first year went well, but the second year I really only studied to get my A's, not to learn the language. In short, I had to much on my plate. About 65% of the second course stuck in my brain. I used Nachalo 1 and 2, and while these books have many problems, they are the best I have seen. I ended up moving to Russia, to Saint Petersburg, and now am attending a 10 month course (5 months in) as prep for the TORFL 1. I am at the intermediate level. I am taking a conversation class, grammar class (2 times per week), phonetics/reading, and literature. These classes are 3 hours per day. My goals: My goals with this additional self study are to prepare for the TORFL 2. TORFL 1 is what is needed to enter into a Russian university but another 10 month course is needed before actual classes may be taken. After undergrad, you must take TORFL 2, this is also need for grad school (my reason). Tomorrow I will buy the full test set for TORFL 1, but sadly none exists for part 2 (it is truely a general knowledge test). I will post my score and problem areas and then from there define my course of action. Methods: This is not strictly defined yet. At the present moment I am currently reading 3 sections of "1st reader in Russian" per day and memorizing the vocabulary I don't know. This is very easy, but so far I seemed to have missed some very important verbs. (this book is worth the 7USD if you are just starting to study) 4 childrens books are next (more detail later). I have had trouble with memorizing large amounts of words at a time. I find I can only learn 3 (actually 6 perf and imperfec) verbs (with all the forms) and have it stick and maybe 2 or 3 other words per day. I have started a new method which is really working for me and I will continue with it. I learn the verb in only one or two forms. If I have a bit of trouble with it or it is weird, I just learn the infinitive. For example: I need "to verb" Most of the time it is some form of the verb, for example: He "is running" up the ladder. I have also been using sentences and just putting new words there. I just simply can't stand flashcard. I keep a word list and review it 2 times per week. With my above method I get about 15 sentences per day. So about 20 words total. *CAUTION* there may be draw backs to this method I have yet to come across. I am currently shadowing a book of Pushkin stories. Every night I listen to "the golden fish" and at first I could not keep up, now I am stay right up with the reader. Using this method I have found I am starting to here more words on TV, but of course not understand them. After a week or two more of this, I will translate the story and then begin working on phonetics. This is for fun and I do it everynight before bed. Other than that, I study 3 hours per day. Normally with my textbooks doing an hour of homework, review from the previous class, and an hour of work in my conversation book reviewing exercises and dialogues. During the day I review my sentences. I encourage others to run a log or make comments so we can push each other to work harder. Thank you. Edited by Jerrod on 12 February 2007 at 1:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6437 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 21 12 February 2007 at 2:44pm | IP Logged |
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Loads of luck!!!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Eriol Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6706 days ago 118 posts - 130 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Portuguese | Message 3 of 21 12 February 2007 at 4:35pm | IP Logged |
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I read your first post Jerrod. And I was thinking about responding to you, but since you are studying for a test that I know absolutely nothing about it's quite hard for me to give you any advice. We do, however, study the same language and have both outgrown the beginner's courses. I would take a wild guess and say that you are way better than me at russian grammar though, I can definitely not pass a second year university course with an easy A. My grasp of cases and verbal aspect is still pretty haphazard, I'm hoping it will just come naturally sooner or later. On the other hand I can understand quite a lot from russian TV and Radio. The reason for this? I have practiced listening a lot. I often turn on an internet radio channel instead of the TV when I get home.
It will be interesting to hear about your "problem areas" later, maybe I can give som advice then. For now, I can just say good luck! If you want some ideas, I wrote a quite lengthy piece about how I'm trying to learn more words here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jerrod Senior Member United States Joined 6343 days ago 168 posts - 176 votes Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 4 of 21 14 February 2007 at 12:59am | IP Logged |
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Hi all, Thanks for the replies.
I went to the store yesterday to buy the TORFL books. There are 4 books in total. 3 of them totally worthless. One, which I bought, is the practice test, one is a dictionary of words on the test (just look at the 1,500 words on the frequency dictionary available on the net), a small book that says each topic you need to know for each section, and a small book explaining the grammar. Today is a holiday, so I can't take the test but I will start on it tomorrow and give feedback. It does not look hard at all, minus the small writing section. My girl will do the reading for the aural section this weekend. Thanks for posting that URL. I have never seen this site, and after looking at it, I am immediately changing my strategy. I am going to try a small experiment. This week I will watch the news every night and note how much I understand and what subjects are discussed. Starting Monday I will read an article per day for one week on those subjects. Then rewatch the news. I am sure this will work wonders. I'll go from there... Russian verbs: Eriol, the verbs are hard, there is no way around this. I have read on this site about people doing some Pimslaur 1-3 course and the new pengiun book hoping to achieve "basic fluency." That just won't happen. At the present moment, my grammar class is devoted to verbs. 6 hours per week for 5 months. The first part deals with aspect and proper usage. The second with the verbs on motion (all 24 of them) with the 10 prefixes of each. On verbs: the best advice I can give you is as follows on which aspect to choose. (I'll update later as I learn more) Imperfective a process, always (i.e. чаще), an event that is certain to happen, motive, command, or something that is never allowed (i.e. Don't drink gas) Perfective request, advice, demand Of course also the basics that you learned in your earlier studies. Conversational Russian can have some differences than what you learned in your textbooks. Russian, as you know, is a very rich and emotional language. Never do you hear собака, but собачка. Even for figurines in a store this is written etc.. If you only know textbook Russian, you expect to hear something in a store like this: У вас есть карта? but I normally here Карточка есть у вас? Nothing too big. OK, I got to go study a bit and clean the house for the holiday. Jerrod Edited by Jerrod on 14 February 2007 at 11:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6437 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 21 14 February 2007 at 8:20am | IP Logged |
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Imperfective verbs can also be used in requests, if you ask to do/not to do something regularly:
Пиши мне! (you expect the person to write more than one letter) You're right about карта and карточка, just wanted to add that карта can also be used in the meaning of карточка, but you have to add smth like карта экспресс-оплаты, интернет-карта etc which is too long and too official. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Tike Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 6334 days ago 18 posts - 25 votes Speaks: German*, Russian, English Studies: French, Czech | Message 6 of 21 14 February 2007 at 1:04pm | IP Logged |
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Hi Jerrods,
congratulations ... I think at the moment you're living in the most beautiful city I've ever seen ;-) I read your posts and was wondering if I took the same test when I lived in Russia, am not sure though. However, I noticed two ways of learning that worked very good for me: 1. Have you tried music or poems? I learnt quite a few words and constructions simply by listening to the same song over and over again, until I knew it by heart. Singing is fun, even if you are as bad at it as I am :-D The only risk is you might pick up a few old-fashioned words from Russian folk songs, but that'll only make people smile :-) This fun way of learning leads me to my second point: 2. You shouldn't be too focused on actively learning grammar. I realize that you have to know heaps of grammar to utter any intelligible sentence in Russian, but I doubt you'll reduce the number of mistakes if you're only revising verbal aspects in a grammar book. This was the case especially with verbs for me. Instead I'd recommend talking and listening, talking and listening...and then reflecting about what you've heard. One can spend hours on discussing the difference between "beri!" and "voz'mi!" (both: "Take!") in theory and never understand it. But then witness people offering for example food to you, and you'll get most of it intuitively. Try to imitate native speakers not only in how they pronounce things, but also in what they say. Okay, by now this post seems to me a bit obvious, but I hope I've made my point... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jerrod Senior Member United States Joined 6343 days ago 168 posts - 176 votes Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 7 of 21 15 February 2007 at 2:06am | IP Logged |
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Hi folks,
Thanks for the responces. Tike, the study of verbs is done formally in a class, but I do agree with you that for home study or just living here, that is not the way to go till later. I have tried Russian songs, but I just can't stand the music. I am a hard rock, punk guy. I can't stand drum machines or pop music. But now that you mention it, I did learn a lot listening to music. I have been told ддт was a good band. I may buy that and see. If it is good, then I can listen to it over and over. Well I just took the first part of the test. I feel very bad now. I got a 62% (66% is passing) (48 right out of 77). The second part of this first section looks easier. Which I will do tonight. Part one is word knowledge and grammar. When I knew the words the grammar was trivial. The problem is I did not know many many words. I need more verbs!! The first section is about two times harder than these three tests here: http://www.rlcentre.com/quizenc.shtml (from Moscow univ). Obviously from this first part, I need to learn more words. I am going to concentrate on word building till the end of Feb. I think a reasonable goal is one article per day from that GLOSS site, with must attention directed at the verbs used. Thus I am dropping the review of the conversation class for now. It is not like I need to review the participle (conversational Russian doesn't use it anyway, but который!). What do you all think? I'll edit this post tonight with my thoughts on the second part. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6437 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 21 15 February 2007 at 8:22am | IP Logged |
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Jerrod, your result isn't bad at all! I did the third test from ricentre.com and some questions were not obvious for me, a native speaker!! If that test is twice as hard then your Russian is really great!
I'm into heavy stuff too btw :) And in my opinion some Russian bands are pretty good, for example Агата Кристи, Кино, Алиса, БИ-2, Аквариум, Наутилус Помпилиус. Imho ДДТ is very good. out of younger bands I would recommend Scartown, but I'm not sure they have any stuff in Russian... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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