Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

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stell
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Re: Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

Postby stell » Sun May 01, 2022 8:37 pm

April was a very quiet month! I mainly focused on watching basketball, learning new stuff for work, and editing my niece's novel. I've also gotten into the habit of waking up at the very late hour of 8AM (thank you long commute to the other side of the house!), so I haven't been prioritizing morning time for learning Russian.

I did very little formal study in April, and mainly kept up my daily 30 minutes of Russian with apps: Duolingo, Memrise and Clozemaster. Clozemaster is strangely fun and meditative, despite being objectively boring. I'm working on the top 100 words, and then I'll decide whether or not to carry on after that.

Monthly Russian update (with last month's stats for comparison's sake):

Month of March:
Memrise: 334 items
Duolingo: working on unit 2, 128 crowns
Pimsleur level 1: units 23-26 (stopped after 26)
Russian Made Easy: episodes 23-30 (completed all of them)
Russian Accelerator: U5L1 - U6L5

Month of April:
Memrise: 464 items
Duolingo: working on unit 2, 147 crowns
Clozemaster: level 23, playing 536 sentences
Russian Accelerator: U7L1-U7L2

Obviously, Russian Accelerator was not a priority this past month. But now a new six-week challenge is starting up, and I think it's time to start waking up earlier and using my time a little bit more productively. (As an aside, I am not generally obsessed with productivity. I’m a huge proponent of rest, relaxation, and the art of doing nothing. But still…waking up an hour earlier and making time for Russian appeals to me right now.)

Plans for the month of May:

Russian:
-join the Six Week Challenge
-aim for at least an hour per day
-get back into the habit of working regularly on Russian Accelerator

Spanish:
-sign up for the Super Challenge
-start reading La Reina del sur
-pick a tv show to start watching

EDITED TO ADD: I can't seem to sign up for the Six Week Challenge. I tweeted out twice, but didn't get a response. I might be doing something wrong. But if I can't figure it out tomorrow, I'll probably drop out of the Challenge. I'm still aiming for an hour a day regardless.
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stell
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Re: Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

Postby stell » Sat Dec 31, 2022 2:15 am

So after my last post in May, I forgot to keep working on languages. Oops!

I’m not setting goals for 2023. I’m not doing challenges. But I do want to log my progress…assuming, of course, that i don’t forget to keep progressing again.

Russian

After six months of nothing, I’ve restarted Russian. I’m treating myself as a false beginner, and revisiting materials that I’ve already done in the past.

This is what I plan on working on:

Russian Accelerator - I think I got halfway through unit 6 last time around. But my piles of paper flashcards were getting unwieldy, and they ended up in the recycling bin a few months ago. So I’ve started over from the beginning, just moving quickly through the lessons as a review. I’ll slow down when the lessons feel harder.

Anki - I’m making simple two-way flashcards with words and sentences from Russian Accelerator (L2>L1 and L1>L2). While I appreciated the act of creating and running through paper flaschards last year, the piles of cards just weren’t reasonable or sustainable for me.

Duolingo - I wiped my progress on Duolingo and started from the beginning for the third time. Yay?

Clozemaster - I wiped my progress and restarted the 100 most common words. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to reset clozemaster to zero.

Materials that I used last year that I don’t plan on revisiting:

Memrise - I’m not going to do Memrise this time around, for one very specific reason: I just don’t feel like it.

Pimsleur - I can’t remember how far I made it into level 1, but it started feeling like a SLOG the first time around.

Russian Made Easy - I got a lot out of this one the first time around. It was fun and useful. But I don’t see any use in revisiting it, seeing as how I’m using Russian Accelerator, which I know will cover everything in more depth.

Stuff I have in reserve for future use:

Assimil le russe - I don’t have the audio for this. I may look into it once I finish Russian Accelerator.

New Penguin Russian Course - I bought this book last year, but never did anything with it.

iTalki - I have enough credits for about ten one-hour tutoring sessions. I’m not in any rush to use them.

OK, so I said I wasn’t going to set any goals for 2023, but I’ve changed my mind. I’m setting one goal for 2023: complete Russian Accelerator.

Spanish

I have three novels that I haven’t started reading yet:
La sombra del viento by Carlos Luis Zafón
Cadáver exquisito by Agustina Bazterrica
La reina del sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

There are several Spanish-language shows on Netflix that I’ve had on my radar for a long time.

I may also look into finding a language exchange partner at some point, but I’m in no rush.
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Re: Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

Postby iguanamon » Sat Dec 31, 2022 3:02 am

Welcome back, Stell! I need to warn you, if you start reading "La reina del sur" (es una tía muy pesada)... you won't be able to put it down! And of course, you need to listen to the theme song/corrido by Los Cuates de Sinaloa.
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stell
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Re: Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

Postby stell » Sat Dec 31, 2022 6:18 pm

iguanamon wrote:Welcome back, Stell! I need to warn you, if you start reading "La reina del sur" (es una tía muy pesada)... you won't be able to put it down! And of course, you need to listen to the theme song/corrido by Los Cuates de Sinaloa.

I binge-watched that telenovela years ago! I love Pote. I just got an email from Netflix announcing a new season…so I guess I’ll have to start with that book.
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Re: Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Jan 01, 2023 12:24 am

Agreed about Reverte's novel.
And I picked up a copy of La sombra del viento by Carlos Luis Zafón in Munich of all places, and once I started it, couldn't put it down. I'm even thinking of having a go just listening to it, long though it is, now that the story has faded from my memory--I read it some six or seven years ago. No promises, we'll see what happens in 2023.
Good luck to you!
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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stell
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Re: Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

Postby stell » Sun Jan 01, 2023 9:19 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Agreed about Reverte's novel.
And I picked up a copy of La sombra del viento by Carlos Luis Zafón in Munich of all places, and once I started it, couldn't put it down. I'm even thinking of having a go just listening to it, long though it is, now that the story has faded from my memory--I read it some six or seven years ago. No promises, we'll see what happens in 2023.
Good luck to you!

Nice to hear such good reviews of two of the books I plan on reading!
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stell
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Re: Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

Postby stell » Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:18 am

I mentioned earlier this week that I’m not setting any hard goals for language-learning in 2023. I have some rough, fuzzy, general goals. I want to work on Russian regularly, and complete the Russian Accelerator course. Luckily, the goal that I set for myself last year was “learn Russian in my 40s”, so I still have plenty of time! I also want to get lots of Spanish-language input this year. But I’m not going to worry about setting big goals or about joining challenges this year. Like I said...rough, fuzzy, general.

I do, however, want to set myself a very simple and not-so-fuzzy fitness goal for 2023: to finish out the year with an average of 10,000 steps per day.

I’ve never really had to focus on steps in the past. As an elementary school teacher, I easily took 15,000 steps per day just doing my job, without even taking into account walking the dog or doing any physical activity outside of work. Now? My job is sedentary. If I don’t make an effort to move, I could easily walk fewer than 2000 steps in a workday. I've definitely gained some weight over the past few years. It's a problem.

Walking more is easier for me when I have stuff to listen to, so this fitness goal will hopefully have a positive effect on my language-learning. I hope to find a balance between Spanish-language podcasts, English audiobooks, and Russian audio resources.

On that note, I have been reviewing Pimsleur Russian while walking over the past few days, even though I said that I wouldn’t. The lessons are really easy…certainly much easier than the first time around! I think last time I quit at lesson 26. We’ll see if I make it that far this time around.

Tomorrow, I may try listening to the first episode of Slow Russian Podcast, just to see if it's remotely accessible: https://realrussianclub.com/slowrussianpodcast/.
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Re: Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

Postby Xenops » Thu Jan 05, 2023 12:25 am

Just so you know, Pokemon Go is available in Russian and Spanish (amongst others). ;) Though I think the best version is French, as they of course have French names for the critters.
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stell
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Re: Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

Postby stell » Fri Jan 06, 2023 2:42 am

Xenops wrote:Just so you know, Pokemon Go is available in Russian and Spanish (amongst others). ;) Though I think the best version is French, as they of course have French names for the critters.
I've never tried that game! Well, I did for two or three days when it first came out years ago. And I liked catching the little creatures, but I couldn't figure out how to fight or what to do with them, so I just stopped playing. Haha! Maybe I'll have to try again someday!
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stell
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Re: Stell's log: Russian and Spanish

Postby stell » Sun Jan 08, 2023 12:52 am

Weekly language update:

Russian

I spent a few minutes every day on each of anki, Duolingo and Clozemaster. They’re my lounge-in-bed-for-20-more-minutes-because-the-world-outside-of-bed-is-cold activities.

I currently have 252 “young” cards in anki, half of them L1>L2 and the other half L2>L1. This morning it took me about 5 minutes to run through my anki reps. I know that this will increase with time as I continue to add new cards. I make my own anki cards, and so far all of them have come from Russian Accelerator.

I’ve completed up to lesson 10 of Pimsleur level 1. These are all review, very easy, and enjoyable to do while walking. I will keep doing the Pimsleur lessons for as long as I enjoy them.

I’ve finished reviewing the first two units of Russian Accelerator. Each unit has five lessons, 30ish very short media clips, and a 20ish minute podcast.

I listened to the first episode of Slow Russian Podcast, but it was definitely too hard for me! I understood very little of the Russian text. The English explanation that followed was interesting culturally, but I’m not sure how much I gained from it linguistically. I think I’ll try this resource again a bit later, when I have a stronger base.

Spanish

I started La Reina del Sur, and I’m enjoying it so far! It isn’t at all a genre that I would choose to read in English, but it’s very readable. That said, I am NOT a fast reader in Spanish. I read for a total for two hours, and I only made it to page 61. Keeping in mind that the actual story started on page 13, that puts me at 24 pages per hour. No wonder it took me years to finish La Casa de los Espíritus!

I listened to Democracy Now en español four days this week.

I also listened to an episode of Futuro Abierto (https://www.rtve.es/play/audios/futuro-abierto/): "Cohousing o viviendas colaborativas". I work with a lot of elderly community members, and I’ve spent a lot of time reading and thinking about housing insecurity lately, so this was a very interesting topic for me. It’s funny…if someone asked me what my favourite Spanish-language podcast is, I would say Nómadas without even thinking about it. But the truth is that I find Futuro Abierto much more engaging for the most part!

Physical Fitness / 10 000 steps

Well, I don’t have anywhere else to track this, so may as well tack it on to my language log!

So far in 2023, I’m averaging 10 637 steps per day. I’m glad that I decided to aim for a yearly average of 10 000 per day, as opposed to trying to hit that goal every single day. One day this week, I ended the day with 8000 steps. It was nice that this wasn’t a “failure”, because it didn’t have that much of an impact on my average.

Aside from taking my steps, I’ve been doing at least 10 or 15 minutes of yoga every day. I’ve also been playing Ring Fit Adventure on my Nintendo Switch - which is way more fun than I expected it to be. Also, I set the language to Spanish, for a tiny bit of extra input. There are ten languages available in the game, including Spanish, Japanese and Dutch. No Russian though!
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