I'm Léa (and not so good at introducing myself). This is my first time joining a language-learner forum and a language learner challenge (to be completely honest I joined the Super Challenge in Spanish in December - got really excited and did really well.. for about five days). The reason I am starting this log is that I am moving back to Kyrgyzstan in a month or so and really need to brush up my Russian. I have lived in Bishkek for 6 months almost two years ago. I started to learn Russian there and tried to keep it alive after moving back to France but unfortunately I didn't always manage to do so. I had a tutor in Bishkek but never followed any conventional classes and mostly learned through everyday-life so it is hard to evaluate my level. When it comes to my reading and speaking skills, I would say that I must be somewhere between A1 and A2 (even though I was able to have quite long conversations about a variety of subjects includings politics, economics etc) but my understanding skills are quite okay (probably more between A2 and B2 - I know I know this is quite a large scale but it really depends on whether we are talking about a conversation in tête-à-tête or a movie). I will also try to improve my English and Spanish (that I believe are both quite advanced). I will not set specific goals for now for these languages but I intend on reading more novels in both Spanish and English this year. My Italian needs some serious work. My understanding skills are still really good, I can easily watch TV but I can't speak. Nothing but Spanish comes to my head when I try to answer in Italian. I try to make some lessons on Duolingo here and there but it is not my priority at the moment and I definetely lack consistency in my studies. I've also started to teach myself Japanese a few months back but again, I believe I will have to put this project on hold for a few months. (Same for Esperanto)
RUSSIAN
Here are my goals for the first half of 2016:
- 1. I want to understand full-speed news radio
- 2. I want to be able to have long conversations in Russian with my colleagues on a regular basis
- 3. I want to be able to "easily" read the news (meaning being able to understand most of the article without having to look for every word in a dictionnary)
- 4. I want to read a full novel in Russian
Here is my workplan (to be updated - for now my work schedule is quite heavy but I will have more free time on February right before moving to Bishkek):
- - Write on Lang-8 again. I used to pick 7 to 8 new words for each session and write 7 to 8 sentences with these selected words. This technique really worked for me so I will keep doing this. I intend to write once a week on Lang-8 (I will try to do more). My lang-8 account if anybody is interested : http://lang-8.com/880375
- - 3 Pimsleur lessons per week
- - Reading 2 short stories or short tales in the following month
- - 10 minutes of reading the news in Russian everyday
- - Watching one soviet cartoon in Russian per week
- - 30 minutes of Anki everyday
I guess that's it for now
