Crispin's personal log: French, Russian, and Arabic

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Red_Lemur
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Re: Crispin's personal log: French, Russian, and Arabic

Postby Red_Lemur » Thu Mar 17, 2016 9:46 pm

Wow, Crispin... Your russian is perfect! You wrote very difficult phrases and you did it well!
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Crispin
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Re: Crispin's personal log: French, Russian, and Arabic

Postby Crispin » Tue Mar 22, 2016 9:13 pm

I'm on spring break this week, which has somehow resulted in me having less time to study. Since my French studies are limited to my classes, I've been focusing on Russian and Arabic.

In terms of Russian, I want to thank Marah for recommending Reverso-Contexto (http://context.reverso.net/traduction)! I've been having a lot of fun playing with this tool and seeing new words used in context with the convenient translations. I've also been using these sentences to make Anki cards, which has been helpful.

Arabic was going well until disaster struck: I lost my book at a local coffee shop! :( It ended up being alright, I had plenty of online resources to fall back on, but now I'm behind in my schedule. I've ordered a new copy and hope to pick up where I left off soon.

My husband is studying Russian as well, and we had a bit of a disagreement as to methods. I'm focusing on just getting as much input as possible, and not really worrying about whether I'm even understanding it, while he's focusing on memorizing vocabulary and drills. We're planning a trip to Russia this summer, so I guess we'll see whose effort bears the most fruit!
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Crispin
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Re: Crispin's personal log: French, Russian, and Arabic

Postby Crispin » Thu Apr 07, 2016 8:16 pm

I decided to write a post about some of my previous language-learning experiences:

I studied Latin for two years in middle school. I was home schooled at the time, but a group of local home schoolers got together every Monday in Mrs. Hahn's living room to study Latin together under her energetic tutelage. In the beginning, it went very well, and I was able to quickly pick up new vocabulary because of the many similarities to English. However, by the end of my second year, I was failing; I had learned vocabulary, but neglected to study grammar! By that time, I had fallen so far behind in grammar that I gave up, believing that there was no way I could go back and learn it all. I became increasingly frustrated with the language and was glad to be rid of it when I went to high school.

In high school, I started studying French. I was determined not to repeat my mistakes with Latin, so I applied myself to grammar drills and spent my free time conjugating verbs. It worked: I did well in French that year and laid a strong foundation that made all my subsequent studies much smoother. However, the most important thing I learned that year was to love the language. My teacher that year dedicated a lot of class time to singing French songs, playing games, and watching movies.
My French learning got a huge boost in the third year of high school when my family hosted a French exchange student. I finally had someone to speak French with! Perhaps even better, she brought with her a pile of novels in French that she let me borrow. That summer, I went to stay with her family in France and got my first experience of a foreign culture.

Coming out of high school, I felt very confident (more so than was warranted) in my ability to learn languages after having such a great experience with French. I decided to study Russian.
Whereas French had made me feel intelligent, cultured, and impressive, Russian made me feel like a stumbling dolt. Everything was unfamiliar and unintuitive; the sound system, the word structure, and especially the grammar. After one year of studying Russian I felt like I still couldn't have even a simple conversation beyond introducing myself.
I was very fortunate, though. My uncle lives in Moscow, and he invited me to live with him for the summer after that first year of university. When I arrived, he was pretty disappointed by my dismal command of the language, and took it upon himself to fix it. He had eight weeks to do so. For the first week, he taught me himself, having me listen to Vysotsky songs and walk around Moscow reading signs and billboards. Then, he enrolled me in intensive Russian classes for one month. After that, he sent me out to live with friends of his in Tula, St. Petersburg, and a tiny village named Barky for a week each. By the end of that summer, I could speak Russian passably, and I had learned to love Russia.

Now, I'm trying to teach myself Arabic. This is my first time learning a language on my own, and it's proving more difficult than I had anticipated. Organizing my studies, setting and reaching goals, and figuring out which materials and methods work best for me has caused me a lot of problems. I'm still in the early stages, but I am at least pretty comfortable now with the alphabet and sound system, and I'm learning to construct basic sentences. This is also my first time learning with a SRS, which is taking some getting used to; it's effective, but also boring. Reading everyone else's posts on this blog about their own language-learning journeys has been very helpful, both in giving me ideas and keeping me motivated.
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