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Shadowing/ Memorising Entire Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Mr Smith Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4266 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 13 06 March 2013 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi everyone!
I am studying Russian. I have almost finished The New Penguin Russian Course and Colloquial Russian. I therefore have a pretty decent knowledge of how the language works, but the only speaking/ listening/ writing practice I have received has been via the texts included in the two aforementioned exercise books - my ability in these separate disciplines is admittedly very poor. Once I finish these textbooks over the next few weeks, I plan on beginning to shadow/ memorise Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. As of next month, I plan on committing to 6 hours of Russian study each day. Shadowing Crime and Punishment will be my main activity and I hope to converse with native Russians on Skype for the remaining hour. Any suggestions on what results I should expect from y strategy, or suggestions on how I can omptimise the use of my time are highly appreciated. Many thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 13 06 March 2013 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Shadowing Dostoyevsky will lead you to understand Dostoevsky and lead to a bit of
practice pronouncing Russian (does your book indicate stress?) but the Skype time is much more important. I would spend 5 hours a day on Skype talking if you want to talk and one hour reading Dostoyevsky. To practice speech, speak. My question is: define your goals and work towards that. Edited by tarvos on 06 March 2013 at 4:00pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4170 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 3 of 13 06 March 2013 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Dostoyevsky is awesome, but maybe you should try Michel Thomas or Pimsleur, or any audio course for your particular speaking/ listening purpose. As for writing, try keeping a journal, or writing essays etc.
How close is Dostoyevsky to modern colloquial russian anyway? Edited by renaissancemedi on 06 March 2013 at 4:08pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5193 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 4 of 13 06 March 2013 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If you think of all the things you could do with 5 hours, memorizing a book has got to be one of the least productive. If you want to talk, you need to activate the part of your brain that pieces things together quickly and that allows you to express yourself -- in order words, you need to talk! Memorizing a book allows you to... memorize a book. I suspect you think this will give you a lot of knowledge and insight into the language, but not only is written language not like spoken language, but only a small portion of the phrases found in the book could actually be useful to you at this point.
As for shadowing, keep in mind that it usually has very little chance of carrying any advantage over to your actual speaking ability or pronunciation outside of shadowing. Skype is a good idea, insofar as there is structure to your meetings, and self-talk would be a great way for you to prepare for these meetings. Edited by Arekkusu on 06 March 2013 at 4:28pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Mr Smith Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4266 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 13 06 March 2013 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Many thanks for your helpful responses.
I have had a few sessions with a native Russian tutor and have recorded her reading aloud all the texts contained within my exercise books. According to her, my pronunciation and intonation are very good when I read texts aloud, so that isn’t an immediate area of concern. I have an unabridged parallel text of Crime and Punishment – stress marks are not included, but I also have an unabridged recording that matches the book precisely. The recording is very high quality and is read by a professional actor. I want to develop all four skills well: Reading, writing, speaking and listening. I find learning vocabulary to be my greatest challenge and I learn words most effectively by seeing them several times in different contexts. Because Russian is so inflective, I have come to the conclusion that learning words linearly (nouns in their nominative form and verbs in their perfective/ imperfective infinitive form) much less effective. I therefore learn the text I am reading well and the words contained within it in the form in which they appear and hope that they continue to appear in different forms within different texts as I progress. My thinking is that memorising a lengthy book will increase my vocabulary massively as normally writers repeat the same field of words. My concern with jumping into speaking so heavily is that I don’t have enough of a vocabulary yet to be able to really benefit from it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Mr Smith Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4266 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 13 06 March 2013 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Mr Smith Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4266 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 13 06 March 2013 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
It’s a bookish style, but I’m under the impression that the essentials of the language over the past century have been almost unaffected. Michel Thomas and especially Pimsleur are methods that really don't appeal to me, but thank you for your suggestion. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5193 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 13 06 March 2013 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't think I could sustain any type of activity for 6 hours, personally. I would favour shorter, more intense periods of study, with a chance to clear my mind inbetween. However, the most engaging type of learning situation for me has always been spending time with another human being, so I would recommend finding a local partner who is a native speaker of Russian and who would agree to meet with you regularly (implying that you would also help him with English). I would otherwise alternate between fun activities like TV and more serious ones like reading or writing. The goal of self-talk is mostly to unlock that speaking ability and to develop fluency. You can always make mistakes and there is never a guarantee that native speakers will correct you anyways. Reducing your mistakes is a long-term, on-going process. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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