Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

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kelvin921019
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Languages: Cantonese (N)
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

Postby kelvin921019 » Mon Sep 06, 2021 12:30 pm

Further streamlining the Assimil process
I have further streamlined my schedule on Assimil lessons and review so that I won't face the problem of not finishing a lesson during the lunch time and cramp everything at night.

I just put in on record so that I can apply this new schedule to any future Assimil I use.
Say I'm doing lesson 50 today.

Night before:
- Create the vocabulary cards for lesson 50 (look up new words in the lesson)
- blank lesson card for lesson 50 (containing the Russian text only for the lesson, so I will have a very brief overview of the lesson when I'm creating it)
Morning transit: Anki review (1+ hr)
Lunch: (30-45 mins)
- Doing the lesson. Listen, read the text and notes, re listen multiple times
- doing dictation for exercise 1 and create the "blank" cards
- do exercise 2

and then re-listen the lesson throughout the day

Night (1.5 hr+)
- bidirectional translation (30 mins)
- reviewing lesson 50 and completing anki card (adding audio, putting down the translation and notes) (30 - 45 mins)
- creating blank lesson card for lesson 51 (20 mins max, it's just typing and occasion looking up of the underlined new words)
- underlining up new words / expression for lesson 52 (5 mins)

It seems overwhelming lot but it's pretty stress free since the creating blank lesson card is something pretty much mechanical. This system allows me to spend less time on looking up new words and creating Anki card but to study the content. This has proven to be less stressful and demanding workflow for me. I'm now making a record just in case I may forget it.
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kelvin921019
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Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
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Spanish (B2)
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Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

Postby kelvin921019 » Thu Sep 16, 2021 3:41 am

Боже мой! Russian Assimil
It's part 2 (lesson 50 to 77) of my Russian Assimil Journey. Honestly it's more frustrating and stressful than the Spanish one. I keep forgetting words I have learnt previously. I think after part 2 I should hop into Tandem and start chatting with native.

On top of that, Russian Assimil, just like other Assimils, contains quite a lot of error. Most of them I think are OK as it does not affect my understanding. But in one of the lesson the audio of the sentence contain "этого" but the book does not and the English translation treated that "этого". It really makes me really frustrated since I thought I heard the audio wrong. There's another footnote which somehow is incomplete.

However, one good thing about Russian Assimil over Spanish one is that there is no new words (just a tiny tiny bit) in the notes, which is a good thing. Since it means all words in the book have an accompanying audio.
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kelvin921019
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Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
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Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

Postby kelvin921019 » Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:01 am

Towards the second break
I'm now on lesson 74 of Assimil Russian and the difficulty ramped up again. This time texts gets longer, audio gets faster and with more new words every lesson. I can barely finish 1 lesson before sleep.

As usual, the explanation in Assimil Russian is minimal and sometimes I need to supplement the text with a lot of google. I have bumped into these 4 sentences which I am not sure what certain expressions mean after googling:

What does these 2 чтобы means here? According to my searches on reversecontexto, I am guessing the structure adj + чтобы means "the [adj] thing is that"
главное, чтобы ты точно знал, чем хочешь зниматься (the most important thing is that)
знаешь, лучше, чтобы ты выбрал сразу.... (you know, you'd better choose right away)

And these two "так и", on the internet they said they are intensifier but it sounds more like "therefore / accordingly" to me
почта уже заркыта, а я так и не купила телефоную книгу
так и сделаешь
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vonPeterhof
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Re: Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

Postby vonPeterhof » Thu Sep 30, 2021 8:04 am

kelvin921019 wrote:What does these 2 чтобы means here? According to my searches on reversecontexto, I am guessing the structure adj + чтобы means "the [adj] thing is that"
главное, чтобы ты точно знал, чем хочешь зниматься (the most important thing is that)
знаешь, лучше, чтобы ты выбрал сразу.... (you know, you'd better choose right away)
You pretty much got it. By the way, I don't think I personally use this structure much; the second sentence even struck me as a little ungrammatical at first glance, before I thought about it a little. By default I'd prefer to use the infinitive (главное точно знать...) and add a dative if I want to specify the person performing the action (тебе лучше выбрать...).

kelvin921019 wrote:And these two "так и", on the internet they said they are intensifier but it sounds more like "therefore / accordingly" to me
почта уже заркыта, а я так и не купила телефоную книгу
так и сделаешь

I actually perceive those as examples of two different phrases that just happen to be homophonous. The latter comes across as the slightly more literal one, with так referring to a certain course of action or way of doing something and и emphasising it as the action to be done ("And that's what' you'll do" or "That's exactly how you'll do it"). The former one comes across as more of an idiomatic set phrase not obviously deriving from the literal meanings of its components, essentially meaning "still". I feel like it's a lot more common in the negative sense as the set phrase так и не, but I guess it can also be used affirmatively. A random example I found by googling: Тинек (Тинькофф) по[д]нялся уже на 1000р за акцию[,] а я тут так и сижу в минусе ("Tinkoff has already risen by 1000 rubles per share while here I am still sitting in the red").
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kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

Postby kelvin921019 » Mon Oct 04, 2021 2:26 am

Second Break
I originally planned to start the second break after finishing lesson 77, but I decided to set it as the start of the next period (which will be lesson 77 to 90).

The ramping up of Assimil since lesson 70 is so significant that I can barely keep up with it. There are around 25 new words every day and around 18 dialogue (+ 5 exercise) every lesson. This is not easy to keep up with. As a result of which the amount of Anki review also ramped up quickly. Fortunately my result in reverse translation is still up to standard (around 80-90% accuracy).

This time I'm going to take a 2-week break from Assimil to mainly clear the Anki backlog and to take some rest before the next period. I will do lesson 19 and 20 of NCPR (about prefix and verb of motion) since it is about the right level with my progress in Assimil. I may also put some A2 vocab into Anki if it's not too demanding.

I should also try to consume some more Japanese stuff. My speaking lesson recently is pretty pathetic.
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kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

Postby kelvin921019 » Mon Oct 11, 2021 8:02 am

kelvin921019 wrote:Second Break
This time I'm going to take a 2-week break from Assimil to mainly clear the Anki backlog and to take some rest before the next period. I will do lesson 19 and 20 of NCPR (about prefix and verb of motion) since it is about the right level with my progress in Assimil. I may also put some A2 vocab into Anki if it's not too demanding.


I change my schedule again: I am doing the remaining contents in alternative weeks. So I start lesson 77 to 83 this week, take 1 week break and do lesson 84 to 90 the week after and take 1 week break and so on. I decided to switch for these 2 reasons:
- the amount of review cards dissipate quickly with only 1 week
- doing 2 weeks consecutively probably overwhelm me again

I'm not putting A2 vocab for the time being. NCPR and Assimil should have contained enough new words to trouble me for the time being.
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kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

Postby kelvin921019 » Mon Oct 18, 2021 11:39 am

Russian: Another break in the wall
It appears that taking 1 week break every week is a good strategy. Anki review blew up near the end of this week and I can make use of the coming week to clear off some back logs.

This week (lesson 77 to 84) is quite demanding since half of these lessons are "vocabulary lessons" (i.e. lessons which apparently serve to introduce quite a lot of thematic words). What's even worse is that the sentences in these lessons start to be more "free flow" and honestly I can't really understand these sentences just by listening and deciphering the declension. Most of the time I need to listen a few times the sentences before I can figure out in my head what the sentence really mean.

Spanish / Japanese
I'm still revisiting Assimil Spanish (for revising vocabularies) and going through N2 Shinkanzen (for revising the grammar items). I also try to incorporate around 15-20 minutes of consuming native media everyday (be it news or TV shows or youtube video).
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kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

Postby kelvin921019 » Mon Oct 18, 2021 3:28 pm

New Book arrival
Today here comes my Tobira of Russian - V Puti. This should be my B1 to low B2 book for Russian and is quite a structured student manual. According to my schedule I will start this book for 2022.

Funny story - I originally wanted to purchase in Amazon and for some reason the price is unreasonably high. Then upon some googling I found that the 2nd edition of the book is published on October and I ordered it from Routledge instead with the exercise book. Just by skim reading of the book I believe this is the appropriate book that basically serves as the "Tobira" in Japanese: when I finish it I should be prepared to speak with a community tutor.

I should have enough material for all languages for now. No more spending money on materials
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kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

Postby kelvin921019 » Tue Nov 02, 2021 1:51 am

The nth break
After Lesson 85 to 90 (I tried to do 91 but simply too tired to do) of Assimil, I take another one week break. I decided to split the remainly lessons (91 to 100) into 3 parts - 91 to 94 for 1 week, 95 to 97 for another, 98 to 100. Since lesson 99 is a poem, I will only do minimal Anki and won't do bidirectional translation.

One thing I have to read up in the future is how to use да and и, and other sorts of particles. In particular и, since it's everywhere but I rarely understand it's function.

Since I take much longer time than expected to finish Assimil, I am not really sure if I can finish NCPR by the end of this year. Probably I will be doing NCPR (with a lot of LingQ) until early next year. Luckily I have no time pressure in finishing all these since taking an exam is pretty contingent upon being able to travel overseas.
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kelvin921019
Green Belt
Posts: 388
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:11 pm
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Cantonese (N)
Chinese Mandarin (Semi-Native)
English (C1-2)
Spanish (B2)
Japanese (N1)
Russian (B1)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16306
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Re: Kelvin's RU, JP, ESP log <- In this order

Postby kelvin921019 » Fri Nov 05, 2021 3:10 am

Language learning is now "boring": Reflection
When I started Spanish last year, I was so thrilled about language learning and read up a lot about the methodologies and eventually found here. I was way too excited and did research on polyglot's method, or even read research articles on language acquisition theories.

The excitement or the thrill more or less comes from experimenting different methods and theories, and test on the efficiency, and eventually finding out how effective they are on me. I was really excited when I finished lesson 100 of Assimil Spanish and realized that I started to understand a lot more and could start chatting with natives.

After Spanish and Japanese, and now halfway through Russian, my method more or less has been settled. I have quite a precise idea on when to use which resources, what would be the next step and what to look for and what to expect at each stage. While there are still room to improve and fine tune, the learning process has more or less become something routine. I am approaching lesson 100 of Assimil and I already know what's next, where I'm approximately at and whether I am ready to dive into native materials or chat with native people (short and obvious answer: No).

This starts to kill the joy on the experimentation and in language learning itself. It doesn't mean I don't enjoy learning new languages, just that "learning" itself has become something routine and predictable and I no longer receive the thrill when I start a new textbook and do translation or work on a LingQ. This is the reason why I spend less time on updating the log because there's nothing much to update. I don't think I can commit to a language just because "I want to learn a new language and see how it goes", I have to look for a stronger motivation to keep me learning a particular language (i.e. "I want to learn IT, not any unspecified language")

This makes me evaluate whether I should really go for French next (although I have bought the Assimil already) - I want to learn it just because I want to learn other languages in Assimil. The language itself doesn't give me much thrill. Probably this won't keep me long in the learning that language unless I have, as I borrow from famous Kondo Marie, "spark joy" in the language.
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