TOTAL: 596.08 hours
OF WHICH:
- 72.83 hours of classes
- 135.53 hours of homework for classes
- 145.62 hours of work on a coursebook
- 59.22 hours of focused grammar study
- 31.43 hours of reading
- 120.48 hours of listening/watching
- 5.62 hours of focused vocabulary study
- 25.35 hours of focused pronunciation work
I set myself a target of 540 hours total in the year, which I therefore exceeded by some way.
I continue to have mixed feelings about Russian. I am more interested in the language than I am in French; I think part of this is because I am very pig-headed and do not want it to get the better of me! But I also think somehow Russian meshes with my personality quite well. It is still a *** to learn, though! I was feeling really low about it, having had quite a few terrible experiences with classes/teachers that I could go on about for a long time over a gin or two… But not wanting to continue feeling this way at least pushed me to try again, and I have - fingers crossed - found a new teacher who I think is a good fit.
I definitely need to get back to speaking, as it’s the only way I’m going to get more fluid, and rust has started to develop even with a short break and keeping up with independent study. It’ll also be good both to be pushed by someone else and - conversely - to get reassurance that I don’t need to learn everything all at once. I feel I’m at a weird level - over the past few months on a couple of occasions I’ve got all or almost all the questions right on teacher-administered B1-level tests for grammar/vocabulary, reading, and listening. I have also been able to perceive progress in listening, and I am definitely able to deal with more complex written texts now compared with a year ago. But it still feels so painful using the language, and so hard to remember stuff. This new teacher seems to think I am at this level (which makes a change from those who thought I needed to go back to the beginning and start again, which I can’t see would ever be a good idea, but there you go), and proposed a sensible plan to move forward. Unlike others who always wanted to keep the content of each lesson a secret, here I’m going to know the topic in advance and be able to prepare. The same topic will also extend over several lessons, which I think will be much better than each lesson being discrete. I’m going to continue doing stuff on my own, but I’ll also have work to do for the lessons with her.
Plan:
- - Weekly lessons, with the aim of focusing on one topic for a while and developing the ability to speak fluidly on more complex topics, and interspersing these lessons with some on particular lexical/grammatical issues.
- Deal with one Russian with Max podcast a week - this involves listening to a c 45-minute podcast, reading the transcript and looking up words (and listening to a c 20-minute separate audio file in which less common words are explained), listening again with the transcript and again without, listening to a short story using new words and do the question/answer and shadowing exercises linked to it. Passive listening has really helped boost my listening this year, despite not doing all that much of it (the number above includes a lot of more focused listening work that I’ve only started doing recently). I’m hoping that putting more of an effort into learning from it will further improve my listening (and also help my pronunciation). It’s also necessary I think because Russian as a foreign language materials tend not to put enough emphasis on developing listening. On pronunciation, I have a cheat sheet from the course I completed, so I can have that to hand to remind me of the rules.
- Read! I have a couple of B1 graded readers, an encyclopedia-type book on Russia, a collection of essays on Russian history, and some texts on Russian art. Over Christmas I read a very abridged version of Anna Karenina, which I really enjoyed - I looked up quite a lot of vocabulary, but it was simple enough not to be overwhelming. I do learn well through reading, so I’m planning on getting some more and working on this further. There are exercises at the end of the graded readers, which I haven’t done at all yet, but plan to.
- Textbook study? I may do some on my own, depending on whether I have time with the classes. Where topics overlap (i.e. I am covering a topic in class that is also covered in a book I have), I’ll be able to use my book as a source of vocabulary/structures.
Basically, I plan to make Russian quite a major focus this year.