Конец игры

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aaleks
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Re: Конец игры

Postby aaleks » Mon Sep 11, 2017 4:24 pm

Arnaud wrote:
aaleks wrote: I came across the test after 2-3 month of studying (about that time I started reading the first Harry Potter book) and it estimated my vocabulary as 4000, or maybe 5000. After 1-1.5 years my vocabulary was about 15000 (of course the numbers aren't accurate or absolute but just estimation). Now according to the test it's 20000 (+/-1000). So it looks like in the last 4 years the size of my vorabulary was growing very slow, especially comparing with the first year. But the main and more important difference between these numbers is not quantity but quality of my knowledge, which the test can't measure or reflect in any way.

Honestly I would be very prudent with that kind of test: I can explose the score with more than 30000 simply because my mother tongue is french: rare words in english coming from french/latin are given and I know them all: the machine deduces that I know a lot of rare words, so extrapolate that I know a lot of english words...That's absolutly not the case.

I agree. There are overlaps with Russian too. Maybe those words aren't 'pure' Russian but loanwords, anyway, I know them as Russian: 'tandem', 'leitmotiv', and so on. Plus words like 'tricorn', that's put in a rare words column, is easily guessable.
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I'm afraid I derailed Xmmm's log :( . Sorry.
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Xmmm
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Sun Sep 24, 2017 12:21 am

I haven't posted on this log in a while, because I've been pulverizing my brain with TV. I'm trying to hit 50+ hours of Russian TV in September and am at around the 40 hour mark.

A lot of it has been Ленинград 46 because honestly that's my favorite Russian show ... although it so awfully gloomy that it seems like I can only watch it once a year. "Cops fighting gangsters after World War II" is a pretty popular theme with Russian TV, so I'm also trying out ликвидация. Previously I tried Once Upon a Time in Odessa, and that's how I learned never to watch anything made by Star Media.

I tried several episodes of фарца, but I really don't like it. The four main characters are despicable, but the writers clearly expect me to sympathize with them. The show is similar to Бригада in that sense. You could argue that Igor Danilov in Ленинград 46 is clearly a criminal, so what's the difference? The difference is that he's an intellectual and war hero that is forced into a life of crime because he's betrayed by his wife and government and hounded by them at every turn. The guys in фарца are just running dogs of capitalism devoid of any redeeming qualities.

Other than that, a ton of Смешарики and some random documentaries.

All this TV has lead to a noticeable improvement in my listening ability. And when I say "noticeable", I mean barely noticeable. It's there, it's not imaginary. But I wonder if 800 hours of listening to Russian is going to be enough. With Italian I'm already hitting 40% comprehension on randomly chosen Italian dramas. With Russian, it's more like 30% and even there I feel like my Italian comprehension is a real number and Russian is more of an "I wish it was 30%" number.

Still, the improvement is there. I'll take it and won't complain.
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aaleks
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Re: Конец игры

Postby aaleks » Tue Sep 26, 2017 11:51 am

Xmmm wrote:I tried several episodes of фарца, but I really don't like it. The four main characters are despicable, but the writers clearly expect me to sympathize with them. The show is similar to Бригада in that sense. You could argue that Igor Danilov in Ленинград 46 is clearly a criminal, so what's the difference? The difference is that he's an intellectual and war hero that is forced into a life of crime because he's betrayed by his wife and government and hounded by them at every turn. The guys in фарца are just running dogs of capitalism devoid of any redeeming qualities.

I haven't seen Фарца so I might be wrong, but in my view Бригада is a different kind of show. To me Фарца is just one of many, whereas Бригада is not just a story about four criminals, but in the first place a story about that time - the 90s. Maybe it's one of the reasons why the series became so popular in Russia in the early 2000s when it was aired the first time.
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Xmmm
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Sun Oct 01, 2017 2:12 am

After finishing 100 hours of TV viewing in September (half Italian and half Russian), two things occur to me:

1. Even good TV becomes bad TV when you are forced to watch it with no end in sight.

2. Given that I'm at a similar level in two languages that are not closely related, I'm in a position to run a reasonably fair experiment on extensive vs. intensive listening.

    A. Italian: carry on with 50 hours of TV a month -- no studying, just input

    B. Russian: do Ari's Chinesepod method scrupulously. Sounds like the active studying part of that would be less than an hour a day, so the rest of it would be passively recycling the completed lessons. Obviously don't exceed 50 hours a month. There have been claims this is more efficient than TV viewing, so doing more than 50 hours a month should be unnecessary.


For the historical record, as of today my listening comprehension for an average, random dramatic TV program is about 40% for Italian and 30% for Russian. Probably it will take at least three months for any real results, assuming I can stick with any given plan for that long. Results to be posted here.
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Thu Oct 05, 2017 3:47 pm

Some initial observations about this intensive listening exercise.

I'm using RussianPod101 and going through one of the intermediate "paths" that has 25 dialogs. I can do 2 or 3 a day in an hour or less. Sometimes I only need to listen once, have 100% comprehension ... done. Sometimes I have to write down thirty vocabulary words and listen ten times (cooking, broken bone requiring doctor visit, some guy selling all the junk in his apartment).

What this tells me is that my listening comprehension problem (30% comprehension of TV) is mainly a question of missing low-level vocabulary. I don't know the words for "garlic", "broken bone", "vacuum cleaner" or "to describe." I know some variations of "I'm sick of/I'm fed up", but apparently in Russian there are a hundred variations for this.

Again, I would attribute this to making a rapid jump to advanced, specialized reading material (politics and high-brow lit) in order to follow the general advice of "read what interests you." I know a lot of 1000 ruble words, but have critical gaps in beginner/low intermediate vocabulary.

So, this is not a super interesting exercise but maybe it is a useful exercise. I'm following the Ari Chinesepod instructions of adding thirty anki cards a day, which means roughly three dialogues. I estimate that RussianPod101 intermediate dialogs will probably yield 1000 cards, and advanced maybe another 3000.

I also have zero luck shadowing (as described by Ari). I can certainly read along with the text. But listening ten times is not enough for me to memorize 100 words of random text. So ... I'm reading out loud with the text and then calling it done.

Once they are done, they go in the completed pile, which I listen to driving or while surfing the web. I don't count any of that time in my stats.
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Thu Oct 12, 2017 4:22 pm

Ari's Chinesepod Method update:

I've gone through 25 "Lower Intermediate" dialogues and 25 "Intermediate" dialogues on russianpod101. My initial "pre-test" comprehension of lower intermediate dialogues averaged 65%. For intermediate, it was 40%.

I now have 33 minutes of review dialogues where my average comprehension (after learning vocab and listening multiple times) is 80%. It will be higher ... once I work through the 400 anki cards I've accumulated. "prank", "handcuffs", "on the loudspeaker", "to grate", "skewer", "vacuum cleaner" ... ugh.

I'm technically half done with the intermediate level, but I suspect progress will slow down at the upper intermediate level. I should still be finished with active study of intermediate level by Thanksgiving.
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Wed Oct 18, 2017 12:24 am

The dark secret of Ari's Chinesepod Method is anki.

If you're really adding 30 new words a day into anki (as the method directs you to), your reviews become pretty long pretty fast. Right now I'm doing 30 minutes a day of intensive listening ... and 45 minutes a day of anki reviews. I imagine I could cut that time by deleting leech cards faster, but still.

I think the method works. I do pre-tests and post-tests and my comprehension routinely jumps from 20->70 or 40->80. If I listened a half dozen more times I could get them all to 90%. I just get so bored. :)

It's not clear to me if this increased comprehension translates into the wild. I guess I have to go on faith for that. I do note that russianpod101.com is careful to insert lots of simulated street noise or party noise or airport noise into the dialogues, so that's good. And starting from Intermediate, I wouldn't say the speed is unnaturally slow (it is unnaturally slow at lower intermediate).

I have Russian 100% on "ACM". I have Italian 100% on "ALG~". It's starting to look very attractive to move both languages to 50/50. That way I could limit myself to watching good TV only and have 15 minute anki reviews.
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Teango » Wed Oct 18, 2017 4:39 am

Xmmm wrote:I imagine I could cut that time by deleting leech cards faster

I thoroughly recommend telling those leeches where to go! I personally find that my return on investment for consistently "tricky" words is pretty abysmal and demotivating over the long-term. I have a much easier time learning overly challenging words later on, once my mind, for one reason or another, is ready for them.

(incidentally, I learnt the Russian word for "skewer", шампур, only yesterday too! :) )
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Sat Oct 28, 2017 4:59 am

Lower Intermediate and Intermediate in RussianPod101 are done. On to Upper Intermediate. It's tedious.

I've been a little out of sorts with Russian lately, trying to fish around for a new direction for the rest of 2017.

Don't want to go back to LingQ.
Don't want to do RussianPod101 or GLOSS very much. 15 minutes a day max.
Don't want to watch the Sniffer.
Can't do silent reading as it's bad for me.

What I really want to do at the moment is L2/R1 some Pelevin. I know Pelevin is on the high end of the lit scale and I'm supposed to go for easy trash, but in his more approachable books Pelevin doesn't look that difficult (judging from page one of Священная Книга Оборотня*, which has been described as "the world's first Zen Buddhist paranormal romance.") . He looks a lot easier than page one of the Boris Akunin novel I was looking at a while back. I have read four Pelevin books in English, and my impression from those is that "Sacred Book of the Werewolf" would be the place to start as it's the easiest. Straightforward story, lots of dialogue. No drifting around where you can't tell who's who or what's going on like in Chapaev and the Void.

L2/R1 solves a lot of problems. It's difficult to find matching text and audio in Russian if the author isn't Tolstoy. Most books are abridged. So ... Read chapter 1 in English, listen to the abridged version of chapter 1 five times in Russian. Repeat if necessary.

edit: actually found unabridged so L2/R2 is possible also


* "This text is not, of course, deserving of any serious literary or critical analysis ... and for serious people who have made their way in this world, the pseudo-oriental pop-metaphysics that the author is unable to resist flaunting before other dismal failures like himself cannot possibly evoke anything more than an intense feeling of compassion." (from the intro)
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Re: Конец игры

Postby Xmmm » Thu Nov 02, 2017 6:34 pm

Listening-Reading to Священная Книга Оборотня seems to be going pretty well. Since I'm doing L2/R1 and L2/R2 and the book in question doesn't have chapters per se, I've had to keep a spreadsheet of stopping points, like:

    Many shrines in Asia surprise the traveller (1:50:xx)
    What a crazy idea that was, to change the name of the KGB (2:11:xx)
    Of course no one gives me rings and brooches like that (2:56:xx)
    A dream echo of fascism (3:44:xx)

I'm trying to line up resources for 2018. I'll go back and L-R Мы. Also looking at Generation "П", S.N.U.F.F., Ампур В.

I'll hold off on Чапаев и Пустота. That's the most difficult Pelevin book I've run into in English.

I'll probably give up my LingQ membership at the end of the year. Whether it's a good tool or not I can't say, but it wasn't a good tool for me.
I think maybe if you had to pass some unaided reading comprehension test to "unlock" more advanced levels that would have been better for me.

Almost done with intermediate level in RussianPod101. Still deciding whether to continue on to advanced level, or give it up and switch to GLOSS.
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