Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian/Welsh)

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Radioclare
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Tue Jul 20, 2021 7:28 pm

Caromarlyse wrote:It's a website called Russian verb drills ;-). (I bought access when there was a big sale, because the full price is pretty high...). There are some recorded lectures, lots of accompanying notes, and then you have audio files with drills. As I said, it was too much early on, but it seems more accessible now, and the audio nature of it might do my appalling pronunciation some good too ;-). I'm not sure I'm going to move on from being overwhelmed by Russian verbs too speedily, though! I also think I'm going to drop in and out of it as and when problem verbs pop up (as happened last week with едут/едят). There's so much to learn! I don't think Russian verbs/conjugations get the same kind of focus as the equivalents do in Romance/Germanic language courses, precisely because (I surmise) there are just so many other problem areas to cover!


Thank you, that looks really interesting! I've bookmarked it in case there's another sale one day :lol: I completely agree re verbs. I feel like there's so much focus when you start learning on getting the case endings right on nouns that verbs are just sort of dismissed in the early chapters of a textbook with a comment along the lines of "they're really not that difficult, there's only two types" and then they don't really crop up again until towards the end, in some sort of nightmare chapter about verbs of motion :D I was hoping that if I did lots of reading then I might just start absorbing the correct forms of common verbs, but I don't feel like it's really happening for me so at some point I'm definitely going to have to dedicate some time to more actively trying to practise verb conjugations.
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Caromarlyse
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Wed Jul 21, 2021 6:03 am

Radioclare wrote:
Caromarlyse wrote:It's a website called Russian verb drills ;-). (I bought access when there was a big sale, because the full price is pretty high...). There are some recorded lectures, lots of accompanying notes, and then you have audio files with drills. As I said, it was too much early on, but it seems more accessible now, and the audio nature of it might do my appalling pronunciation some good too ;-). I'm not sure I'm going to move on from being overwhelmed by Russian verbs too speedily, though! I also think I'm going to drop in and out of it as and when problem verbs pop up (as happened last week with едут/едят). There's so much to learn! I don't think Russian verbs/conjugations get the same kind of focus as the equivalents do in Romance/Germanic language courses, precisely because (I surmise) there are just so many other problem areas to cover!


Thank you, that looks really interesting! I've bookmarked it in case there's another sale one day :lol: I completely agree re verbs. I feel like there's so much focus when you start learning on getting the case endings right on nouns that verbs are just sort of dismissed in the early chapters of a textbook with a comment along the lines of "they're really not that difficult, there's only two types" and then they don't really crop up again until towards the end, in some sort of nightmare chapter about verbs of motion :D


Exactly!
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Caromarlyse
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Mon Jul 26, 2021 7:08 am

I’ve done a bit of German listening this week, but not too much - loads of podcasts seem to be on summer holiday! I’ve done quite a bit of Portuguese listening instead when walking (when it’s not been too hot). I’ve been persevering with Brazilian news podcasts. I wouldn’t say I understand everything, but I can definitely follow along adequately enough to feel I’m getting something out of it. I’ve also started reading a novel by a Brazilian author - on an e-reader, so I have easy look-ups, but, again, it’s going fine, even if I end up skipping the odd sentence because I can’t decipher it. It's nice to read a *proper* novel - they give a lot more food for thought, and with age I've become a lot more interested in literature than I ever was whilst in education. I have to study materials very intensively in class, really delving into the meaning of individual words/phrases, so reading for "feel" is a nice counterbalance. It’s also a chance to get some better written input - I was conscious I was dealing a lot with colloquial language, which is fine, and as I understand it even quite formal Brazilian language is on the informal side, but I wanted to balance that out with something more literary.

Russian has continued. I still feel as though I’m in a bit of a transition period, moving on from one type of classes but not quite with a new routine set up. I’ve still done quite a lot of studying in this phase. I’ve done some doubling back, revising and then building on stuff I’d covered before. Some of that process involved a lot of new building: numbers, for example, are covered early on, but then most of the declension of numerals comes much later - for good reason, since there seems to be a different set of declensions for every single number*, and then the following noun changes in all manner of different ways... Having stumbled through numbers when speaking/reading in class this week, I spent a few hours revising/building on this area over the weekend. It’s more a question of memorising rules rather than anything *too* conceptually difficult, but there are an awful lot of pieces of information to memorise! I hope now I might have a fighting chance of working out how to say a number with the correct ending(s) when I come across it in a text, or at least be in a position to take on board the correction when it is given. I’ve also listened to some podcasts, though I’ve just downloaded some new ones, as I’ve been running out of material - we’ll see how I cope with full-blown Russian podcasts this week! I’ve found some interesting looking ones (on technology, culture, business, money), though I can’t find the kind of 15-minute long, daily news bulletin podcasts I usually like (because they appear each day, aren’t too intimidating, and get you into what is going on in the country). If anyone had any suggestions…? I’ve also done a bit of reading with my English parallel text, though not a whole lot. July has generally not been a good reading month!

* Maybe not quite every.
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby AroAro » Tue Jul 27, 2021 7:40 am

Caromarlyse wrote: I’ve found some interesting looking ones (on technology, culture, business, money)


Would you be so kind as to share here some of these podcasts? I think I'm going to work more on my listening comprehension in Russian soon and these podcasts would come in handy :)
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Caromarlyse
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Tue Jul 27, 2021 8:25 am

AroAro wrote:
Caromarlyse wrote: I’ve found some interesting looking ones (on technology, culture, business, money)


Would you be so kind as to share here some of these podcasts? I think I'm going to work more on my listening comprehension in Russian soon and these podcasts would come in handy :)


Эмоциональный интеллигент
Книжный базар
Деньги пришли
Как это по-русски
Мы всё умрём
Не верю!

I have no idea yet if these are any good! I googled (in Russian) something like the best Russian podcasts to find these - if you did the same, you might be able to find others that appeal to you more.
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Caromarlyse
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Sun Aug 01, 2021 5:14 pm

END OF MONTH REVIEW

I’ve done very little German this month, though I did have a nightmare in German this week (in which I was arguing with a ticket inspector as to why I had not bought a ticket…). I know how my subconscious got the idea, but why it decided to play it out in German, I don’t know. Perhaps it was trying to make up for my wakeful neglect?!

Portuguese has continued with classes, homework, podcasts, and now some reading. Listening to podcasts in particular took a big leap forward (the main beneficiary of German being ousted). I have a couple of news podcasts that produce content daily or very regularly, so there is almost always something there. I also have one sports podcast I go to, but less regularly. Some of the time the sound just washes over me, but I do follow the stories too. In particular I enjoy getting the Brazilian (and Brazil’s “near-abroad”) viewpoint, because it’s different from what’s covered in the news in the UK.

I’ve done a lot of Russian (July was my best month yet for both Russian and Portuguese, time wise!). However, it has felt very up and down. On the positive side, I think I might have sorted a new routine, or at least the skeleton of one.

I have one new teacher who really delves into the minutiae. For a start, we stick to the same topic for a long time, which helps me remember the vocabulary. She seems (so far!) patient in correcting my errors in stress. I am really not skilled in pronunciation. Even when I read about English sounds, I am completely lost. I’m not an auditory learner. What I do seem to remember is if I see words written down with the stress marked, especially if I’ve just made a mistake with it, and then the correct version is written down for me. She’s doing that. I manage to pronounce even simple words that I know very well incorrectly, but at least there I seem to be able to take on the correction immediately. It’ll be good to get rid of these mistakes, as I can see otherwise it would be really easy for someone to conclude I know nothing! My goal is just to get to a point where I am understandable - it is truly beyond me to have a “good” accent in a foreign language, so a comprehensible foreigner is good enough for me! Also, when a new word comes up, this teacher will stop and we’ll make loads of sentences using that word. She does something similar with grammar, breaking off and drilling whatever I got wrong. I’m doing some writing again, and she’s marking it. She also gives me a lot of listening exercises to do (at home), which we discuss together, and she then provides the transcripts, so I get active listening practice.

The other teacher follows an approach more similar to the one I’ve used to date - she introduces a topic on the day, which we then discuss, with some new words/grammar introduced. I don’t get to learn words beforehand, which generally I’m not sure I find too helpful, though given I’m doubling back and these classes have quite a bit of repetition with what I did with my old teacher, having to pull words from my long-term memory on the spot is not such a bad thing. I’m not asking for/getting homework from this one, which is what I want, and I think it’s working well because I get to spend more time revising what we covered, as well as continuing with my own study. The numbers that I was studying on my own did end up coming in useful in class, and I even got some of them right! I need to go back and look at the various tables of declensions again, though. I have concluded that the most common case that will come up is the genitive, so I might focus just on that for the time being; it will be a bit like, as a child, having to know only the answer to 7x8 to prove to random people who care to test you that you know your times tables.

As for self-study, I’m 27% through my Russian book. I have continued with podcasts. I listened to one (for native speakers, from the list above) about how much money you need to live in Moscow. I understood a lot more than I feared I would. It helped that there was a lot of repetition - the hosts were interviewing people one by one on what they did, how much they earned, what they spent on eating out, when they last bought a mobile, etc. I really enjoyed it. It’s always fascinating to hear about other people’s lives.

NEXT MONTH - GOALS

German: read my next Krimi. Get back to listening to an hour of podcasts a day. I have a small backlog, which should keep me going.

Portuguese: classes + homework. Finish my book (currently 29% of the way through). Podcasts as and when. Grammar exercises where appropriate to support class work.

Russian: classes + homework. Finish my books (one in Russian; one in English about Russia). Podcasts as and when. Verb drills when they come up. I also want to make working on Let’s Improve our Russian a more regular thing. As a sub-goal, in the first two weeks of the month I want to finish chapter 1, module 2 of my B1.2 book, as that will keep me on track to get to the end of it by the end of the year. I’ve made a start today, and since this module in the B1.2 book covers verbs of motion, I’ve decided to use Let’s Improve our Russian on the same topic. Hitting it from all the angles! I'm still going to have questions (that I hope I can get a teacher to go through with me in due course), but so far the explanations in Let’s Improve our Russian seem pretty good. Or maybe I've just covered this topic so many times now, that something finally has to start sinking in!
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Caromarlyse
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Mon Aug 09, 2021 5:35 am

I passed the threshold of 1,000 hours of language learning time in the early part of this week. Completely meaningless, but a nice number nonetheless :-)

I was then quite focused. German I just did listening, but have got back into the hour a day. I looked up a couple of words that I'll note down in the record I'm keeping this year.

Portuguese has continued with the usual classes and homework. I'm now just over half way through my book. I'm losing interest; I'm starting to see why the positive reviews talk only about the general idea of the book. My review so far: interesting premise, but there is so much self-pity and the story doesn't seem to move! I will persevere though, just so I can say I've read my first Portuguese book. I also listened to some podcasts.

Russian has had the most attention. I've done a lot of verb drills, including recording myself, which is painful and frustrating, as I can't mimic sounds! I've focused a lot on verbs of motion too. I'm not sure I'll get to the end of chapter 1, module 2 in the next week as I feel this topic deserves more time. I've not done any reading in Russian, but I did (finally!) finish my book in English on Russian history, read another complete book in English on contemporary Russia, and started a third. I'm also starting to write something again. I'm still finding it tricky to get a routine I like set up. It's useful to fix the basics but I feel I'm not pushing forward in the same way as I was doing with more complex reading and writing tasks.

Edit: I forgot to say that I also explored some travel programmes that were listed in a reading comprehension article in my B1.2 textbook. I've watched a few episodes now of Поедем поедим, on Uzbekistan, Vladivostok, and Dubai. I enjoy the later episodes the most, where the focus is not just on the food of a place, but also more broadly on the place itself. There are about five others on the list (including Орёл и решка, whose mention in the Russian study group thread reminded me to add this edit), all of which I think merit exploring at some point.
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Caromarlyse
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Tue Aug 17, 2021 7:16 am

I'm very late with my update - I actually had a bit of a life (!), and I've become too used to getting language learning in when I have very little else on.

Last week I managed to get my hour of German listening in each day, however (it's this week that things are going to be trickier - I'm running to stay still). Listening to an Easy German podcast, I heard about a YouTube documentary series called Ein Belg in Deutschland, and also watched a few episodes of that. It's a Belgian TV guy doing a cycling tour around all of Germany, in an attempt to master the language and make a trailer to try to find TV work in Germany. He's got quite a nose for stories (he finds people en route to interview), and the production quality is great. All in all, I'd recommend.

Portuguese was just classes and homework, plus some podcasts. It's going well; I just don't have much to say about it!

Russian got a lot of attention again. The first book in the Let's Improve our Russian series has about one hundred exercises on verbs of motion, and I've been really focusing on them. With so much drilling of unprefixed verbs of motion, I am starting to feel better about them. It also had a fantastic explanation of the transitive unprefixed verbs of motion - before, I never knew which one to pick; now I seem to be able to get it right all the time. I'm behind on my B1.2 book as a result, though flicking ahead, it seems that some of the stuff I'm covering (idiomatic uses of verbs of motion) will come up later, so I should catch up, and, in any case, even if I don't, it doesn't matter! The important thing is to learn, not complete something by an arbitrary date. Watching Russian travel programmes has been a good companion to this work, as they contain lots of live examples of verbs of motion! I still have routine issues, but I feel I've got a lot of decent resources now that are working well for me, so I feel happier about doing more stuff independently.
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Caromarlyse
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Mon Aug 23, 2021 7:16 am

Another week of overestimating the number of hours in a day!

I've kept up with my German listening. I could really do with studying the language properly to see a real leap forward, but this is I think a two-year plan for the future (i.e. maybe in three years' time!).

Portuguese has continued to suffer a bit at the expense of Russian, but I've kept up with my normal routine, and am still averaging over an hour a day.

Russian has been the main focus again. I've continued with the verbs of motion work, moving onto the prefixed verbs. The framework and explanations set out in Let's Improve our Russian are really helping me. I now can almost always get the right verb, I just sometimes have to remind myself of the correct conjugation. It's still nowhere near automatic enough to suffice for conversation, but it's progress. This weekend I cleaned my garage doors, using five washing-up bowls of soapy water in the process. My husband then didn't even notice they were clean. This is a metaphor for how I feel my Russian study is going. Loads of effort, hard to notice any results! I also looked at some verbs that take the genitive for class.

I've also worked on my pronunciation. This is a real bugbear for me. I fell for the direct marketing that arrived in my inbox at just the right time, and bought an online course. I figured I definitely needed to invest both the time and money. The course is actually really good, and just what I need. Some things that I'd always been confused over have been explained already. As I'm such a visual learner, it's also helpful to see phonetic transcriptions of words to show the pronunciation rules in action. This is how I got to terms (somewhat) with French pronunciation; just listening and repeating has never worked for me. I've done one block of exercises, which I'm going to repeat several times now before moving on. It doesn't feel too painful now I've got a clearly defined plan.

I've not done any reading again, but have stuff lined up to come back into the routine. I did continue with some reading in English about Russia, but I blame the lack of sunshine for my poor showing here (I was planning on lazing in the garden reading, but a whole load of drizzle that was not forecasted put paid to that...).
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Caromarlyse
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Re: Caromarlyse’s log (French/German/Portuguese/Russian)

Postby Caromarlyse » Sun Aug 29, 2021 8:58 am

NOTE: I've messed up with overwriting my 29 August update. So this post now contains my recovered 29 August update. New update for 13 September is now in the next post.

German - I’m just about keeping up with the hour a day of listening.

Portuguese - principally classes + homework and podcasts again.

Russian - loads of pronunciation work. This course is really useful. It is filling in some huge gaps that I had. So far I’ve only covered a few vowels, but given they change their sound in many different ways depending on their position in the word, this is still a lot of sounds! The course assures you that you will need to go through the rules and exercises many times. I’ve already gone back over them for some of the vowels, and I am now feeling more solid on them. Of course, I already know the pronunciation of lots of words that are already familiar to me, but it’s helpful to understand why they end up being pronounced the way they do, and I hope that knowing the rules will allow me to make a better stab at pronouncing unfamiliar words in the future. I’m quite annoyed that I didn’t have explanations like these at the beginning of my Russian study, but I suppose at least now I have more hooks to hang the rules from. And the problem is not going to go away unless I do something about it now.

I’ve also continued with lots of exercises on verbs of motion from Let’s Improve our Russian. I think I should be through them all within a few days now. I’ve been making myself a cheat sheet/reference table as I go, which is acting as a crutch until I’ve learnt all the conjugations off by heart. At least I now understand the structure. I’ve always found it so confusing that the unidirectional (group I) and multidirectional (group II) verbs of motion then add prefixes and group II (generally) becomes imperfective and group I perfective, i.e. that they swap position in the order they’re generally written in. But I think I’ve got a better mental framework for this now, and going through each of the prefixes and the various different meanings they can give has helped to understand when group II verbs can be perfective. It also seems that sometimes prefixes cause the stem verb to change (приплывать/приплыть; влезать/влезть), but I’ve not seen this explained anywhere, or even addressed at all, except for in the case of ездить becoming prefix + езжать.

Once I’ve finished these exercises, I want to go back to the B1.2 textbook, finish off the verbs of motion exercises at the end of chapter 1, module 2, and (finally) move onto the next chapter! I think I’m going to be working independently on my Russian for a while - it’s been proving exceptionally difficult to find someone to work with who will meet me where I’m at (and listen to me), and I think investing more time in searching is just going to be a distraction. I’m going to work on:

    Pronunciation - this is a weakness, and the course is, as mentioned, very good. I hope that working through this and then really focusing on the pronunciation of any new words I come across (and understanding why they are pronounced the way they are) will lead to real improvement.
    Let’s Improve our Russian textbook - I really enjoy this book (I do love grammar exercises, so it’s perhaps not for everyone!). As mentioned, I have the verbs of motion section to finish in the short term. I will then go back to my coursebook, but at some point I want to go back to this too. There is a long section on reflexive verbs and then another on participles and gerunds - both of these are areas I’ve covered in my B1.1 textbook, but I’m *still* shaky on them, so more revision would be a good idea. I think the same goes for the section on numerals… Aside from those topics, the one remaining one in the first volume of Let’s Improve our Russian is aspect. I’m sure there will be stuff in there that will be good to go over (especially in relation to the conjugation of verbs), but that’s probably at the bottom of my list.
    B1.2 textbook - I want to start going back through this asap, just because it gives me a bit more of a rounded course of study. I might end up rotating between this and the grammar book. I also need to keep going back through what I’ve already covered to review/revise vocabulary.
    Other listening - I’ll continue with Поедем, поедим! (because it’s low stress and interesting for me) and dipping in and out of the various podcasts I have in my app when out walking.
    Other reading - I think I’m going to rely on the textbook for my reading material for the moment. I don’t think I’ve got much out of the reading I’ve attempted so far. I do have stuff I want to read at some point, but I want to plug my gaps first.
    Speaking? - I’m going to take a break. I think it had stopped being effective. Again, I want to plug my gaps first before getting back to this. I think it would be helpful to have some kind of proof of being at a solid B1 level before reaching out to teachers again.
    Writing? - I like writing, but I’m able to construct written work almost too well. I think the plan above is the priority, and then when I’m revising the content I will go back and do some writing without any external references as a test of what I’ve assimilated.

This has turned into a bit of a plan for the rest of this year (and possibly beyond!) … I’m quite excited by it, which is a good sign. Perhaps taking the pressure off and absorbing stuff just for myself will be effective - watch this space!
Last edited by Caromarlyse on Mon Sep 13, 2021 9:25 am, edited 3 times in total.
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