Arnaud wrote:- I've read 10% of Гиперболоид инженера Гарина. Well, I don't know if I want to continue, the book is not bad but it's too difficult for my current level (around 8% of uw) and it's not exactly a masterpiece (but I'm reading it too slowly to really appreciate it: sci-fi books are made for fast-pace reading, not spending one hour on one page after having searched 40 unknow words). Plus, I've noticed that the edition I was reading was different from the audiobook I've found. A little search on Wikipedia showed that the author wrote 4 versions of his book, cutting here, adding there, so I had to change of edition to follow the audio.
Interesting, thanks for the heads up on the different editions.
Arnaud wrote:- I definitively have an enormous problem of understanding when I listen to audiobooks, so I've started again to work on Человек-амфибия, as I have a complete list of the vocabulary. I try to listen a chapter until I can understand it, sometimes I read aloud repeating after the speaker when I place the stress on the wrong place in my head.
What level of comprehension counts as understanding here? I tend to read a chapter and listen afterwards reading along. I don't really pay much attention to how much I understand when listening. Perhaps I should, I don't know.
Arnaud wrote:- That neverending list of unknown vocab is depressing : On Italki someone asked the question "what's the difference between скрыться, спрятаться and прибрать?" And I could ask that kind of questions for a ton of verbs I meet everyday: which verb in which context ? What's the subtle difference between this and that ? Generally I don't have the answer. It's frustrating. Russian is frustrating and the more I progress the more I feel my knowledge of that language is superficial and fragile. Something definitively didn't work, but I don't know what: perhaps the lack of teachers to explain why this and not that. I've too many unanswered questions and they keep on accumulating.
Vocabulary is brutal, especially when you start reading fiction. To me there seems to be three levels of difficulty with Russian words:
- Dictionary is enough - when there is a more or less direct L1 equivalent, or maybe it maps to 2/3 words. In any case the meaning is fairly clear.
- Explanation is enough - it requires some explanation to get to the bottom of the meaning and afterwards it makes sense.
- Only exposure is enough - dictionaries and explanations don't seem to make things clear. Only after lots of exposure does the word make sense and become clear.
The first two are where the word can be learned consciously and are the least frustrating. The third group you just have to accept will take time. You can perhaps speed up the process by finding and going through lots of example sentences.
It makes more sentence to concentrate of the first group of words, it's more time efficient. If it seems like an important word, then investing the time to seek out an explanation may make sense. The third group takes a lot of effort, and basically it's better just to park those words and just accepting they will become only completely clear to you with time.
At list that's how I see it. I'd be interested to hear other people's experiences.