Dylan95's log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
Serpent
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3657
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 10:54 am
Location: Moskova
Languages: heritage
Russian (native); Belarusian, Polish

fluent or close: Finnish (certified C1), English; Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian
learning: Croatian+, Ukrainian; Romanian, Galician; Danish, Swedish; Estonian
exploring: Latin, Karelian, Catalan, Dutch, Czech, Latvian
x 5179
Contact:

Re: Dylan95's log

Postby Serpent » Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:24 am

Dylan95 wrote:Note to self:

Anki is a great tool for reviewing and maintaining vocabulary. Not as much for learning vocabulary. Stop mindlessly throwing words into Anki without bothering to learn them first! Reviewing words you haven't even learned yet is inefficient!

:lol:

You can throw them into anki and suspend until you've actually learned them :) (I haven't used anki for years and i don't remember if there's an easier way to keep them out of your study cycle...)
1 x
LyricsTraining now has Finnish and Polish :)
Corrections welcome

User avatar
Dylan95
Orange Belt
Posts: 198
Joined: Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N)
Currently Studying
Russian C1
Uzbek B1
Ukrainian B1~

Previously Studied and mostly forgotten
French
Italian
Latin
x 399

Re: Dylan95's log

Postby Dylan95 » Sat Mar 24, 2018 4:06 pm

I'm starting to have a real problem with remembering verbs. I don't have any problems with the verbs that I use every day, but some less common verbs that still come up pretty frequently are definitely causing me trouble. I guess I'll have to force them into my daily life in order to fix this. I'm going to try and cut my daily dose of new words on Anki down while simultaneously increasing the number of daily reviews. I'll also try and force them into my daily logs that I keep in a personal journal.

I can almost always passively recognize these verbs, so it's not that I completely forget them. But actually recalling them when their time of relevancy comes is becoming a bit of an issue. It doesn't prevent me from getting the point across, but it does lead to an uncomfortably high frequency of ugly circumlocutions.

If anyone has any advice, send it this way! :)
3 x

User avatar
Dylan95
Orange Belt
Posts: 198
Joined: Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N)
Currently Studying
Russian C1
Uzbek B1
Ukrainian B1~

Previously Studied and mostly forgotten
French
Italian
Latin
x 399

Re: Dylan95's log

Postby Dylan95 » Sun Apr 01, 2018 1:49 pm

Using a combination of Anki and Quizlet, or more specifically the way I have been using them over the past week, seems to be helping quite a lot. Previously I just dumped words into Anki and learned them as they came up. I was very lazy about it.

Now I'm using Quizlet at the beginning when words first come up. (i.e. the learning stage). I find that Quizlet is better for this because repeating cards over and over again as much as I want is just a lot easier and flexible there.

At the end of each day when I decide that I have sufficiently learned all of the words assigned for that day, I copy them into my Anki deck because I prefer Anki's SRS system over Quizlet's. It sounds a bit clunky, but it only takes a few minutes. It's only been a little bit over the week since I've adjusted the way I use SRS/Flashcards so it's probably too early to tell, but I'm happy with my results so far.

I've also become a lot more strict about writing down in my notebook every single mistake I make. Obviously a lot of the time people don't correct me, and I don't always notice mistakes on my own, but it's making a big difference. I've corrected a lot of small errors, some of which I'm pretty embarrassed to have failed to notice so deep into my studies. Big thanks to Cavesa for advising me to do this on a different thread a few months back. https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =17&t=7313
0 x

User avatar
Dylan95
Orange Belt
Posts: 198
Joined: Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N)
Currently Studying
Russian C1
Uzbek B1
Ukrainian B1~

Previously Studied and mostly forgotten
French
Italian
Latin
x 399

Re: Dylan95's log

Postby Dylan95 » Fri Apr 20, 2018 9:11 pm

Over the past two weeks I've been trying to spend more time consolidating what I have, and overall trying to correct as many habitual errors as possible. I've been focusing a lot on improving my intonation, and I think that's slowly improving.

Honestly, earlier in my studies, I thought that if one became immersed in a language, they would wind up speaking like a native speaker after at least a few years. I've come to realize that this is simply not true. I've spent the past year in a Russian university with hundreds of foreigners studying Russian from many different countries. (US, France, Germany, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, South Korea, Vietnam, and especially China)

Two of my closer friends here are both 22 years old and from Istanbul. One of them has been studying Russian in Russia for four years and the other for five years. Both speak Russian practically 24/7. Even amongst themselves they usually speak Russian. Both of them are intelligent, but one of them speaks considerably better. Their pronunciation is very good and their overall conversational vocabulary is also very good. But while one of them makes very few grammatical errors, the other usually makes a few mistakes in every sentence. They aren't terrible errors, and they don't have any effect on his ability to communicate, but they are nevertheless mistakes. He's a smart guy, and he speaks well, but his Russian skills seem to have stagnated because he is satisfied with his current level. While a lot of people might think this is obvious, as a novice language learner, this particular comparison has really influenced my view on language study. I think this anecdote illustrates the necessity of applying one's self to one's studies if they want to progress in their language skills, especially at the more advanced stages.
7 x

User avatar
Dylan95
Orange Belt
Posts: 198
Joined: Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N)
Currently Studying
Russian C1
Uzbek B1
Ukrainian B1~

Previously Studied and mostly forgotten
French
Italian
Latin
x 399

Re: Dylan95's log

Postby Dylan95 » Sun Jun 10, 2018 8:32 am

Not too long ago, I decided to start studying Turkish. Most of my energy is still being spent on Russian, but having two close friends from Turkey and my interest in the agglutinative nature of Turkish have compelled me to start studying the language. I don't know if I will continue with it, but for now it's a nice break from Russian.

I'm using a combination of duolinguo, anki, FSI, and a Turkish textbook that I found on Amazon.

Turkish is the first non Indo-European language that I have studied, and I have to say that it has really made me appreciate the lower ends of the CEFR scale. When I studied French and Italian I seemed to reach A1 in no time, and A2 followed shortly after. Russian wasn't quite as simple, but having studied Latin previously, basic conjugations and declensions didn't trouble me much.

Turkish on the other hand is completely different. I've only been studying it casually for a couple of weeks off and on, but I don't see myself achieving a solid foundation of the language's structure for quite a while. Interestingly the SOV structure of the language so far isn't much of a problem, but the suffixes are. It doesn't seem that complicated, but it's so different that I think it just takes time to get used to. Obviously I only have surface-level knowledge of the language, but these are my initial impressions.
2 x

User avatar
Dylan95
Orange Belt
Posts: 198
Joined: Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N)
Currently Studying
Russian C1
Uzbek B1
Ukrainian B1~

Previously Studied and mostly forgotten
French
Italian
Latin
x 399

Re: Dylan95's log

Postby Dylan95 » Tue Jun 26, 2018 8:46 am

Today I received my ТРКИ II exam results. For the most part I'm pretty happy with them. I feel very comfortable speaking Russian, but I had no idea what my results were going to be. For those who don't know, this is the equivalent of a B2 level exam. A passing score requires at least a 66 in all sections.

Overall Score: 86.5

Reading - 88/100
Writing - 73.8/100
Grammar/Vocab - 86/100
Listening - 84/100
Speaking 93.8/100

I'm not sure why the overall score is 86.5 since the average of these scores is a little lower, but that's what it says. I guess some of the sections are weighted differently?

I'm not surprised that writing was my lowest score. While I generally feel very comfortable writing in Russian, the written section required me to write up a formal complaint, a letter, and an advertisement. I had never written a complaint, and only a couple of times written a formal letter, so that caught me off guard a bit. The advertisement prompt was also just plain weird. I also didn't manage to stay within the proper word limit on any of the sections so I must have lost points for that.

At some point I'd like to take the level 3 exam as well (C1). I think I could already pass most of the sections, but writing would definitely get me, so I won't worry about taking that exam until I've put a lot more energy into my writing.
15 x

User avatar
MamaPata
Brown Belt
Posts: 1019
Joined: Tue Jun 21, 2016 9:25 am
Location: London
Languages: English (N), French (C1*), Russian (B1), Spanish (B1).

Long lost: Arabic and Latin.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=3004
x 1807

Re: Dylan95's log

Postby MamaPata » Tue Jun 26, 2018 12:46 pm

Congratulations! Молодец!
2 x
Corrections appreciated.

User avatar
Dylan95
Orange Belt
Posts: 198
Joined: Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N)
Currently Studying
Russian C1
Uzbek B1
Ukrainian B1~

Previously Studied and mostly forgotten
French
Italian
Latin
x 399

Re: Dylan95's log

Postby Dylan95 » Tue Jun 26, 2018 5:39 pm

MamaPata wrote:Congratulations! Молодец!


спасибо :D
0 x

User avatar
Dylan95
Orange Belt
Posts: 198
Joined: Mon Feb 29, 2016 3:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N)
Currently Studying
Russian C1
Uzbek B1
Ukrainian B1~

Previously Studied and mostly forgotten
French
Italian
Latin
x 399

Re: Dylan95's log

Postby Dylan95 » Mon Jul 16, 2018 2:00 am

Honestly at this point one of the things that is holding me back the most is contradictory/vague information. It's one thing to memorize the meaning of a word. It's another thing having to spend lots of time simply finding out what the word actually means. Often times I'll look up the meaning of a word that I've come across in a dictionary or on the internet and show it to a native speaker for confirmation only to have them reject the translations I've found.

This is probably the most unenjoyable part of the language learning process for me. Finding a good dictionary would probably go a long way, but for now I'm having trouble finding solutions to this problem.
1 x

User avatar
neofight78
Blue Belt
Posts: 539
Joined: Wed Jul 22, 2015 8:02 pm
Location: Novosibirsk, Russia
Languages: English (N), Russian (B2+), Spanish (A0)
Language Log: viewtopic.php?t=833
x 1232

Re: Dylan95's log

Postby neofight78 » Mon Jul 16, 2018 10:25 am

Congrats on the exams results, they are excellent!

On the words meanings, good dictionaries may help, but only to some extent. There are words that match well to our native language, others that can be easily explained, but then there are others that really need to be learned from context to properly understand them. For me the key is to actively learn the ones that can be understood from a dictionary and just leave the others to be naturally assimilated.
1 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Chmury, Google [Bot] and 2 guests