Xmmm's Log ...

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Xmmm
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Xmmm's Log ...

Postby Xmmm » Thu Jan 18, 2018 6:24 pm

Russian

I finished reading HP #1 extensively. It was a bit of a struggle. I'm still one hair under the line where extensive reading really makes sense, but I'm also at the point where parallel reading feels like a cheat.

The next book I plan to read is "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" by Leskov. I'm thinking I will feed one chapter at a time into a frequency tool, and pre-learn the words I don't know. I just did this with chapter one, and got boredom, sadness, to loiter, widowed, ill-mannered, etc. Hopefully learning 30 or 40 vocabulary words before reading each (short) chapter will boost me into extensive reading range.

I'm still struggling with leech cards on Anki. When I go over 10%, I go through and de-leech a handful.

: 2057 / 5000 Anki cards
: 516 / 10000 Pages read extensively
: 0 / 200 Italki hours
: 8 / 36 Modern Russian
: 90 / 938 Russian in Exercises
: 895 / 50000 Words written
: 77 / 312 Glossika



Italian

Pimsleur is too easy for me at this point, alas. Should have done it a year ago. I'll finish level 1 but won't continue unless someone tells me level 2 is a huge jump up. Otherwise, back to Glossika.

: 1147 / 5000 Anki cards
: 1793 / 10000 Pages read extensively
: 0 / 200 Italki hours
: 4 / 30 Italian FAST
: 6 / 20 Practice Makes Perfect Complete Italian Grammar
: 513 / 50000 Words written
: 36 / 312 Glossika
: 13 / 60 Pimsleur 1-2



Turkish

Nothing too interesting to report yet here. I'm trying to pick up 10-20 words a day from TurkishClass101. Depending on how many words I can pick up there I may go straight to FSI Turkish or I may take a detour through Turkish Tea Time.

: 190 / 2000 Anki
: 4 / 120 Minutes of comprehensible audio
Last edited by Xmmm on Wed Dec 12, 2018 5:57 pm, edited 8 times in total.
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Xmmm
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Re: Xmmm's Log

Postby Xmmm » Sun Jan 28, 2018 6:15 am

https://www.arealme.com/russian-vocabul ... e-test/en/

russian_vocab_201801.png


I can't swear to its accuracy, but the results seem roughly right in my case anyway. I've eyeballed a top 10000 frequency list and know about half the words.
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Xmmm
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Re: Xmmm's Log

Postby Xmmm » Sun Jan 28, 2018 6:25 am

https://www.arealme.com/test-dimensioni ... aliano/en/


italian_vocab_201801.png



On the other hand, this seems just a wee bit high. The similarities between Italian and English allow for a lot more guessing. It does explain why I find Italian easier to read than Russian, though.
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Re: Xmmm's Log

Postby Deinonysus » Sun Jan 28, 2018 7:50 pm

Thanks for posting that vocab quiz! I got similar results in French to your results in Russian, although I agree that a lot of it is probably just from English cognates, like your Italian results.

You may wish to take a look at the higher levels of Pimsleur, 4 and 5. I'm doing Pimsleur French 5 at the moment and it has some pretty challenging grammar, with complicated sentences, lots of tenses, and heavy use of subjunctive. I'm guessing their Italian is similar.

Are you familiar with Shostakovich's opera adaptation of The Lady Macbeth of Mtensk? I'd recommend the Mstislav Rostropovich recording with Galina Vishnevskaya and Nicolai Gedda. There was also a movie version with the actors lip-synching to this recording; fair warning, it's very NSFW.
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MamaPata
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Re: Xmmm's Log

Postby MamaPata » Sun Jan 28, 2018 8:08 pm

Xmmm wrote:Russian

I'm still one hair under the line where extensive reading really makes sense, but I'm also at the point where parallel reading feels like a cheat


Oh boy does that feel familiar! So close and yet so far!

I want to do the vocabulary test but I'm not sure I want to hear that I am a 5 year old Russian child!
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Re: Xmmm's Log

Postby Xmmm » Tue Jan 30, 2018 7:15 pm

I want to report a success I had in the month of January that might be of interest to someone else.

My previous efforts to work with FSI style material (FSI Spanish circa 2013, Modern Russian circa 2016) have always floundered.

In the case of Spanish, I think it was from skimming the text as fast as possible, then trying to do all drills in the car. I found that I sank under the waves in the restructuring drills. For one thing, the audio for Spanish hisses like crazy, so the fact that I hadn't carefully read the text meant I often wasn't exactly sure what they were saying. And obviously not reading the text carefully had a negative effect on the restructuring drills, and being the car meant I could hardly pause the recording to take a peek in the book.

In the case of Modern Russian, I went overboard the other way. I sat down, book in hand, and plodded through the chapter. These chapters tend to have four hours of audio, and be about 20-25 pages long and I was trying to get it all done in one session. I found I was reading the text carefully enough, but I was completely zoning out on the audio. Maybe the first hour went all right, but my attention wandered after that. And if I tried the tactic of doing an hour a day, I could always find an excuse not to get back to it.

Even worse, once I got through it ... how long till I forgot everything?

Okay, so here is the new approach. Apologies to any reader for whom it seems painfully obvious.

    1. Sunday. Spend two hours reading the chapter with no audio. Put all the vocab into anki. Put example sentences that illustrate the new grammatical points into Anki. Read things twice if necessary. But don't listen to anything.
    2. Monday. Tackle most of the hellish audio during the three hour hellish monday commute. Finish up the audio when home, if needed (there always seems to be an hour left).
    3. Tuesday - Saturday. Use the new grammar points as the basis for the output challenge material. Write 200 words a day of new sentences using the new patterns, and check them all at languagetool.org Also use the new grammar points as the basis for the output challenge audio recordings. Ten minutes of day saying "Vladimir says that Oleg is a good guy, but I don't trust him. I think Oleg was in prison" (my original contribution to Modern Russian) is much better than "Well, I'm sitting ... in a room. And ... talking to my phone. Again."
So anyway, this is a huge improvement in my operations and I've now completed chapter 10, which leaves only 26 chapters to go. :)

I still have to iron out a couple things.

1. They conclude every chapter with a reading where the audio matches a text in Russian cursive. What should I really be doing with that? Maybe just L/R a few times and hope over time my ability to read cursive improves? I'm wondering if it will be of any use, since it's actually handwritten cursive and not that Italic font that changes all the Russian characters around in an annoying fashion. I'm not sure if reading one with help with reading the other.

2. They also conclude with what looks like a dictation exercise. It looks pretty long ... 300-500 words. Should I be doing that? Right now I L-R it, but don't sit down and do it as a dictation because that would add ... an hour? to each chapter's workload. I imagine I should, but it will make Monday nights rough.
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Re: Xmmm's Log

Postby Xmmm » Sat Feb 03, 2018 6:15 am

For all you Turkish learners, there is a ton of Turkish shows on Netflix. I started watching Diriliş: Ertuğrul just because it was a period drama with lots of fighting. Not as good as Vatanim Sensin, but not half bad either. The fight scenes have room for improvement, but the cinematography and costumes are great. There are only two seasons, but each season has 76 episodes so that's not so bad. :)

I'm sure the shows are available elsewhere, but Netflix makes it awfully easy to toggle subtitles and keep track of where you are in each series.

I learned "Peki ...", "Dayan!" and "Yap dedim!" in episode 1. I also recognized "Haydi bakalim" many times, which I learned last week at TurkishClass101.
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Re: Xmmm's Log

Postby Xmmm » Sun Feb 04, 2018 6:58 am

turkish_vocab_201802.png


I thought for completeness I ought to take this as well. This result is the most nonsensical one I've had, because my real vocabulary is about 300 words.

One problem is that when they ask for synonyms or antonyms for a verb, they give four answers. And two are verbs and two are non-verbs. So, one of the verbs must be the answer and if you just know what a verb looks like in Turkish your odds of being right doubles.

Of the 50 questions, I actually knew the answer to 3 and the rest was guessing (sometimes slightly educated, mostly random).
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Re: Xmmm's Log

Postby MamaPata » Sun Feb 04, 2018 9:51 am

Xmmm wrote:
turkish_vocab_201802.png


I thought for completeness I ought to take this as well. This result is the most nonsensical one I've had, because my real vocabulary is about 300 words.

One problem is that when they ask for synonyms or antonyms for a verb, they give four answers. And two are verbs and two are non-verbs. So, one of the verbs must be the answer and if you just know what a verb looks like in Turkish your odds of being right doubles.

Of the 50 questions, I actually knew the answer to 3 and the rest was guessing (sometimes slightly educated, mostly random).


This was the problem I had with the Russian one. I ended up getting a really high score (waaay above my actual level) and I'm pretty sure it was just that I did that. Combined with a few lucky guesses, I ended up doing really well. Nice for the ego, but not actually representative.
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Re: Xmmm's Log

Postby reineke » Sun Feb 04, 2018 4:50 pm

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