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How proficient can you get on your own? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5722 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 1 of 6 12 December 2011 at 12:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been studying Russian on and off for four years. I consider myself pretty good at
it; I can hold conversations in Russian, I can understand most Russian pop music, and I can squeeze my way through a book. However, none of these things are effortless. I feel like no matter how much I study, it will never be enough to reach an actual... fluent level. I can read French very well because I have Spanish vocabulary to back me up, but I don't have that advantage with Russian. I don't have any opportunities to travel to Russia (maybe I'll have some in the future at college, but as for now I don't know) nor do I really have that many Russian speakers to speak with. I'm also not entirely devoted to Russian, either. I'm trying to just get into native speaker materials, but it feels like a very long journey wherein I'm making very little progress. When it comes to learning a language with vocabulary that's rather different from your native language, how do you reach proficiency when you've already learned all the most frequent words? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6397 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 6 12 December 2011 at 2:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I've reached advanced fluency in Finnish without ever having classes. I did travel though, but I'm sure when I mention this most Finns assume I spent a few months there at least once... it was never more than two weeks at a time, actually.
But you do have to be devoted, I'd even say you need to love it insanely. I read quite many books (maybe something like 7000 pages total, I'd estimate), listened to music all the time etc... the active skills catch up as your passive ones develop. (I also have the "steps" filled in detail in my profile:)) What exactly does your last question mean? How do you proceed with learning the vocabulary after that? Again, reading. I found a few frequency lists but it was horrible actually. Once I had started I didn't want to drop it, but it was tedious and frustrating and just ajgkdfgj. The only lists I sorta recommend are those by Gunnemark. Here in Russia nobody cares about copyrights so you can find A LOT of things to download :P I recommend going in this direction (: Since you're bilingual in two very popular languages, it should be easy for you to find an online language exchange partner. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5181 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 3 of 6 12 December 2011 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I encourage you to try self-talk, such as the exercise I suggested here.
The idea is that you should concentrate on creating language, just the way you would when having conversations, except that self-talk allows you to start over and over until the sentences you create flow naturally from beginning to end, until you are satisfied with the result. This type of exercise can be done anywhere, anytime, and should help you improve fluency. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4846 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 4 of 6 17 December 2011 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Since you know English, French, and Spanish, you could try to make connections between
words and constructs in those languages and in Russian. I think it helps establish a deeper linguistical understanding and a sense of connectedness with and between your languages. Don't approach it as a formal study though, just every now and then pick a word, phrase, or construct and try to think about it, google etymologies or something. I find it fun, you might too. Travel's for suckers, thinking is the new thing, or maybe skype, I always get those two mixed up. As far as vocabulary goes, you describe yourself advanced enough, I think, that it's no different than acquiring vocabulary in your native language. I wonder why you say it's "rather different from your native language" -- if you pick up a book on quantum field theory or a law paper in your native language, I dare say you're in for a terminological surprise assuming you're not already proficient in that area. That's something that never ends, L1 or L2, so pick something fun to triage and have a go: if you follow news try to follow them in Russian, or maybe you've interested in ancient Greek philosophy, do that in Russian. To concur with Arekkusu, self-talk and choosing to think in a new language is a big help. If you're not doing that already, you definitely should, as much as you're comfortable with of course. But as long as you're "squeezing" through a book, or listening to pop, you should think about the topic in target language. Finally,
Guess what, you're never going to have native Ukranian or Polish, to back up your Russian, that ship's sailed obviously, so forget about it. However, consider how much of this problem is psychological. What I mean is that I had a similar experience, only with L1/L2 reversed, which is to say things felt very "effort-full" and not actually "fluent". Except for some time obviously the cause for that was mostly "mechanical" -- not enough words, wrong emphasis, unclear diction, weird word choice -- but it's not easy to notice when those go away, because the feelings of "effortfullness", of awkwardness, of inadequacy of experience stay until you notice them and decide not to feel so invested in every conversation as a foundation of your linguistical skills, not to feel awkward like you're a pretender faking your way through, not to feel like you need X years (insert your age) of equivalent experience in your target language to feel adequately prepared. Maybe that's uniquely my experience and doesn't apply to you, but think about it anyway. In fact, think about it in Russian, I dares you. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TrentBooks Triglot Groupie United States TrentBooks.com Joined 4654 days ago 43 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Guarani Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Japanese | Message 5 of 6 22 December 2011 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
In my experience, language learning happens in a 3 stage process. The first is a basic/fundamental learning of the language, which is usually done from a "student" perspective (e.g. I'm going to "study" Russian). The second phase is to advance your level of understanding through the media, such as mentioned in the posts above with reading books, as well as watching movies, listening to music, etc. It sounds to me like you need the third stage, which is application. To achieve true fluency, it is my experience that you simply must converse with native speakers. There seems to be a cyclical pattern between steps two and three, where the learner uses the mass media to further language skills, practices with a native speaker, receives corrective feedback, returns to the media for reinforcement of those corrected principles, and, simultaneously, learns new material from the media (which can then be applied in conversation with a native). Lather, rinse, repeat. If access to native Russians is not physically possible, meaning you won't be traveling there and you don't know any Russians living near you, the internet becomes your friend. Find someone online who is trying to learn one of the languages you know, or is simply interested in conversing with you in a "pen pal" sort of way. Chat rooms (assuming those still exist), social media, forums, and/or email are great for this. For what it's worth, I had a really interesting conversation with a native Paraguayan through Twitter who spoke Guarani and was absolutely shocked to find a white American who could speak his local language. Experiences like that go a long way toward motivating you to continue learning the language you are learning.. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5811 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 6 22 December 2011 at 11:34am | IP Logged | ||
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It sounds as if your only problem is speed, so as others have said, the key is practice, practice, practice, or even produce, produce, produce. The more you speak, the quicker your recall and production gets.
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