Let's start with some background:
I was born at a very young age. I got interested in Russian when I was about 10. BBC started showing "Russian: Language and People" and I found the Cyrillic alphabet, the language and the Cold War fascinating. Brezhnev was still in power and waving weakly during Red Square parades. It took me until I was in my late twenties to go to night school to take a GCSE and then an AS-level. In my early thirties, inspired to leave a safe job in the UK I spent 3 years working in Russia and travelling around all the 15 countries that were part of the Soviet Union. I got to a good B2 level - and passed the TORFL Level 2.
Then I went to live in Vietnam... Seven years later, I still haven't picked up as much Vietnamese as I would like. I'm at basic taxi/shopping level (whatever that is in CEFR - maybe A1) but would like to improve to a conversational level. In the meantime, I've started to forget some Russian words. ):
I'm now living in Ho Chi Minh City. I'm married to a Vietnamese woman, which wasn't the original plan when I moved here. (: She uses English so much at work and home that even when she's angry, she shouts at me in English, so I don't even learn angry Vietnamese with her! (: I've just finished a time-consuming year-long project, but still working 9-5 Mon-Fri. I also go to a surprisingly energetic yoga session 5-6 times a week, which I want to keep going to and adds additional time constraints to my day.
Today is a day off in Vietnam - Independence Day. A good day to reflect and make a plan! So here goes...
My target destination for Sep 2016-Dec 2017 (about 16 months):
Russian: back to B2, and on to C1
Vietnamese: get to B1/B2 level
2-3 hours/day plus a little more at weekends, alternating languages on a week by week basis.
That's about 600-700 hours for each language, which is hopefully enough!
The road I will take, plus specific goals:
Russian
Input: I'm nearly good enough to watch films/read books and understand most, but still miss some information. Build this through extensive input, with support from written text/subtitles.
- GOAL: 100 films - will do this as part of the Super Challenge 2016-17
- Russian films/TV, with Russian subtitles at first. I will watch classics and modern series: Bandit Petersburg, Uboynaya Sila, Master and Margarita, Kukhnya (with polydog's transcripts if needed), Last of the Magikyans, etc. Some old fave films, such as Irony of Fate, Operation Y, etc, plus a few modern films
- GOAL: read 100 books - Super Challenge 2016-17 (audio at the same time as reading)
- Russian audiobooks, with support from Russian texts and/or English translation Plan to start with Harry Potter series to ease myself in, then move on to great works (Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Dostoyevsky) to push myself a little, and some lighter, modern 'detektiv' books such as Darya Dontsova.
- GOAL: work through all the B2/C1 books I have
- Poshli Dalshe, Okno v Rossiyu 1 & 2, Let's Improve our Russian 1/2/3
- GOAL: 5000 words in Anki
- Anki, set up 10 words review per day
- GOAL: Write 50,000 words
- Start up a blog. One post/week in Russian. Look at lang8 for checking, etc. Try transcribing some of the audiobooks or TV series.
- GOAL: 5,000 minutes of speaking
- Record myself reading parts of the books above, shadowing books (reading aloud at normal speed with the audiobook), etc. But need some real conversation too - so plan to use italki at the end of each study week.
Daily life: luckily I'm living in Vietnam, so I need to use the resources all around me for input and output. Vietnamese are very open to chatting to people who are learning Vietnamese. I'll look at taking classes if there is something to fit my working schedule.
Input: Still need a lot of vocabulary building.
- GOAL: Complete Vietnamese Duolingo/Mondly
- GOAL: Complete Memrise: "Comprehensive Vietnamese"
- GOAL: Do all of Learn Vietnamese with Annie (youtube)
- GOAL: Complete Elementary Vietnamese coursebook
- GOAL: Complete Continuing Vietnamese coursebook
- GOAL: Complete Tieng Anh ("for non-natives") - goes to Intermediate level
- GOAL: Complete Glossika 1, 2 and 3
- Only the Northern accent at the moment. This includes listening, transcribing and speaking. GRS: 100 day repetition. Glossika 3 if there is time.
- GOAL: Read+Audio for Harry Potter in Vietnamese.
- Mirrors the Russian studies. A bit of a stretch goal.
- GOAL: 10000 words in Anki
- set up 20 words review per day
- GOAL: Write 10,000 words.
- Writing and a journal.
- GOAL: Record 1,000 hours
- Shadowing, reading passages, free speech, etc. (In addition to speaking in daily life.)
I realise that fitting in study is often the biggest challenge. So the plan:
- Do 20 minutes listening/shadowing on the commute each way (40 mins total)
- Get to work early and do 20 minutes before starting
- 60 minutes at lunchtime
- 60 minutes before my wife gets home and we go out for yoga and food
[In Vietnam, it's cheaper, quicker and easier to eat out than cook at home!]
OK - that's the plan until December 2017. Doing the Super Challenge should help focus on the Russian. Daily life will help to push the Vietnamese. I hope that this log and participating in this forum will also be a good incentive.
Like many people here, I don't want the language journey to end there. I'd love to know some more Slavic languages - Bulgarian, Polish, and Czech all interest me. I feel that it would be easy to pick up French or German. I'm also interested in something different - like Hungarian or Chinese or Korean. For some reason I'd like to learn Dutch one day. So for 2018-19, I'll dabble in a few of them and then pick 2 or 3 that I like most to study to a B1/B2 level, while maintaining my Vietnamese and Russian. A medium-term destination target, then is 5 languages at B2 or higher by December 2020.
Wishing everyone success on their own language journeys!