The Great Russian Resolution of 2021

[Der Geissler]

Since it's the first day of the first full week in 2021, I'm starting my Russian challenge to complete a couple of courses that I've been wanting to work through.

Rather than aim for a particular CEFR level in Russian, I am going to focus on completing material that should take me to about a lower intermediate level, but wherever I wind up at the end of the courses then that's where I wind up.

The first course is the set of videos from Red Kalinka. I've worked on many different Russian books over the years but never took a course, so this is the closest I probably will get to enrolling in a live class. I am giving myself until the end of 2021 to complete the course, but my goal is to complete one unit per week (the course has a total of 40 units.) However since I know some Russian already I am starting with Unit 8 - that was the first until where I looked at the vocab list and thought, "Hmmm, now there's a bunch of words I don't know already..." Ideally I would finish in 33 weeks since that's how many units I have left, but I am padding the time a bit so that I can have a review week after each of the 4 sections, plus whenever life comes up and I need to be flexible. But I really like the idea of having a different focus for each day of the week....kind of like leg day or arm day at the gym (but that's a whole 'nother resolution....)

My study plan for Sistema Kalinka goes like this:

Monday
Go over new vocab + video 1 (vocab and grammar)

Tuesday
Go over dialogs + video 2 (discussion of dialogs)

Wednesday
Go over text + video 3 (discussion of text)

Thursday
Do the exercises (Упражне́ния)

Friday
Watch video 4 (discussion of exercises)

Alongside Sistema Kalinka, as a supplement I will be going through the first volume of Russian Step by Step by Natasha Alexandrova. I haven't decided where to start with that yet, but I mostly want to use the exercises in that book as a supplment since Sistema Kalinka is all computer-based and I want to get more writing experience, plus I think I will ultimately feel more confident in my Russian with multiple resources. I might just start from Unit 1 and do a unit per week as well.

I am hoping hoping hoping that getting through these two courses will get to to where I can get more out of Russian podcasts that I listen to regularly anyway and understand maybe 30, 35 percent of it, like Russian With Max or Very Much Russian. Like I said, I don't care much about my CEFR level in the end, I am more focused on working with material that I feel drawn to, and ultimately I will know more than I did before, much more.

С Новым Годом!

[Der Geissler]

5. January 2021

I don't know why every time I set out to create a new Anki deck it's like re-inventing the wheel - I always go through the same learning process getting everythign to sync between devices and getting media to show up. Anyhow, I got this week's vocab for Kalinka (Level 1, Unit 8) set up on desktop and iOS, complete with audio files that I got from the Sistema Kalinka website and then uploaded to Audacity, where I chopped the one big audio file into smaller ones for each vocab entry, then aligned those files with each Russian word with English answer. I also (for the first time) am starting to test recall by setting them up so I get the English and I have to come up with the Russian. So much simple stuff with Anki I have yet to learn....somebody ought to write a really simple guide to basic Anki functions because so many of my questions required wading through really complicated fora for what was really a simple answer.

So yeah, in 2021 why don't I somehow become an Anki guru and an Audacity guru too, I don't have enough on my plate as it is

пока друзья!