Kimchizzle's Spanish, French, Dutch and other adventures

[kimchizzle]

I'm going to post my Russian log here from HTLAL.

07/17/2015

I started learning Russian a month ago. I'm creating this log to begin and try to keep track of my personal progress so that I can see how far I have came.

Current method:

Listening and Reading texts, using the Learning with Texts program.

Currently I'm studying about 2 hours a day, 5 days a week and a little less each day on the weekends.

Goals:

To be able to listen and read news broadcasts, Russian politics, historical documentaries and also music and movies or tv shows.

Whatever basic things I learn to speak and learn along the way is ok, but speaking will not be a focus.

Writing and typing will not be worked on at all.

Lately I've been doing a lesson series I found on a website and transferred it to learning with texts. The lessons are very good and designed for learning with texts, but I've begun to get bored of the slow pace, even though my progress has been good.

Currently I can recognize past and future tense, adjective-noun agreement, and starting to understand patterns of cases.

I recently found this podcast series, http://russianpodcast.eu/podcasts.html and I plan to soon add the podcasts to the learning with texts program. I don't plan on going in order but rather, just finding topics I like. The podcasts are considerably more input than the current lessons and I have a good enough foundation I think I won't get lost very much in lots of things I don't understand.

07/18

Russian

I uploaded three texts into my learning with texts program from the podcasts series. One about simple questions, another about family, and a third about Moscow. I uploaded the dialog texts before I read Arnaud25's suggestion and realized I couldn't understand the explanations, which is understandable due to my level in the language. So I was skipping the explanation sections. I feel like the podcasts is going to be much better for me since it is much more input that I was previously receiving, also I find the content more interesting. Later today, I plan to reupload the texts using the transcripts from lingq since I will then be able to understand the explanations as well. I've also begun to use the Euronews website to listen to Russian news and follow along with the text. I don't understand very much at all, but I'm using the resouce just to get myself used to the speed of real Russian. The podcast is for students of Russian so the speech is very clear and a slower speed than normal.

Things I've noticed:

Russian news is spoken incredibly fast to my beginner ears. It seems even faster than other languages I'm familiar with, such as French and Spanish. I'm really far away from being able to understand spoken Russian well, outside of the context of my studies. If news is hard, I know movies and tv shows will be even more difficult. It just takes time, I'm just a beginner after all.

This word was in my studies today: достопримечательностей
I was surprised at the length of the word, reminded me of my flirtation with German a few years back. It doesn't seem to be the norm in Russian though from what I've noticed so far.

French and Spanish

I decided I would use Euronews to improve my listening and reading comprehension in French and Spanish. My French in those areas is fairly decent, probably around a B2 level, my degree is in French and I lived in France for close to a year a few years back, but I rarely get a chance to use it much anymore since I don't need it for my job, so certain grammar has dropped off a bit and speech and writing needs improvement, but my current focus is on Russian. I want to maintain or improve my listening comprehension as much as possible in the meantime. Listening and reading news in French I'd guess I understand over 95%. I have also begun to listen to French podcasts when I am surfing the web or what not.

My biggest problem in French for listening comprehension is currently conversation and colloquial French. I've forgotten a lot of slang and expressions since moving back from France. I would find listening to a conversation between native french speakers to be quite difficult. If I was speaking one on one with me and a native speaker, I would be ok understanding and communicating back, but just listening to a group of natives would be hard for me. Maybe I will try to find French talk shows to improve with, something similar to how the Graham Norton show is in the UK, with lots of banter and jokes.

Eventually, I'm going to work on improving my French speaking and writing again too. But I will wait until my Russian is much better first.

My Spanish is nowhere good as my French, but I can understand quite a lot of news if I read the text along with the dialog. Reading is my best skill in Spanish, I can read quite a lot of intermediate level texts due to recognizing cognates with French and also having some formal study of Spanish in college so I understand the grammar a bit, although I've forgotten it to be able to use it actively for the most part. Sometime in the future I may look for telenovelas with Spanish subtitles to improve my listening comprehension.

[kimchizzle]

I'm glad I found this forum since HTLAL went down for me, I haven't had anywhere to update my Russian journal and wanted to keep my thoughts and experiences written down.

Russian

I've been continuing using the Russian podcasts as a learning tool. The vocabulary and grammar is much more advanced than what I've been studying with, but I feel that I am learning more due to having more input. I'm really happy with my progress I've been making.

A problem I due have using the Russian podcast series is since the vocabulary is much more advanced than what I've been used to and many more words per lesson, there are quite a lot of words that are brand new to me. Sometimes there are 100 new words in a podcast, so I spend a lot of time getting the learning with texts program prepared using yandex so I can learn from the podcast transcripts. It can take me almost an hour to get definitions for 100 words in a new podcast. Eventually as I learn more words, there will be less words I need to get definitions for though.

French and Spanish

Just using Euronews to maintain. I've also been listening to French podcasts while surfing the internet some as well.

[kimchizzle]

Russian

I've been feeling a bit less motivated about studying my Russian texts everyday. Not letting it bother me too much, but it does concern me. I know if I continue to put in at least an hour a day, in a year my progress will be great. Just got to stay dedicated.

I've noticed some patterns recently in my studies. Certain words I seem to remember extremely easily, such as акула, even though I have barely any exposure to the word, I've never forgotten it since. Other words, I've been exposed to many times over and always seem to forget such as нравиться, после, зато. It's strange how this happens.

Maybe putting these words in context into a flashcard program would cement these words I often forgetting into my mind more quickly. It may be something I try in the future.

I found a way to export words from LWT to Anki which I plan to try.

http://www.streetsmartlanguagelearning.com/2012/05/how-to-ex port-learning-with-texts-terms.html

With my language learning approach I'm using, I've been trying to figure out what is the best approach to efficiently progress in my studies. There are two approaches I've thought about using learning with texts. Either continually listening and reading to new texts and content moving on after you can understand around 75% of the vocabulary, or listening and reading a small amount of texts and keep reviewing them until I can understand everything to a higher level, such as 90% and listen and understand most the texts without reading.

I think both methods have their merits and cons. The con of continually moving on to newer content at a lower level of comprehension is that it takes a long time to get new texts prepared in the LWT program (paying for Lingq would solve this though) and less common words are not remembered as easily. The con of reviewing a smaller number of texts to a high level before moving on is boredom of listening and reviewing the same content over and over.

Currently, I'm trying to review more diligently the words I forget and remember everything through exposure and context. I've gotten a bit lazy and tend to ignore words that are hazy when I understand most of a sentence or understand the sentences nearby. My Russian level isn't at a level where I should be ignoring those words so much.

French and Spanish
Same ol' same ol'

Eventually I'm going to have to use LWT with Spanish. I see quite a few uncommon words that I don't recognize fairly often.

[Expugnator]

I will be following your log here, too, Kimcchizzle. Be prepared, don't expect to make as much quick progress with Russian as with French or Spanish. I advise you to use Assimil because it has the appropriate amount of words at each lesson for learning comfortably (and even then I didn't manage to, I retained very little from my four Assimils).

[kimchizzle]

@Expugnator Thanks for the kind words and advice. I will keep Assimil in my mind, maybe I will give it a try in the future.

Russian

So, I decided to try Anki for flashcards of words I was remembering as well as others. It was quite easy export my texts to Anki using the LWT program. I was happy about that. After exporting my least well-known words for one of the texts, I soon made a realization; I was actually was forgetting many more words than what I thought. I believe that I thought I understanding more of the words in the texts, due to listening to the texts at the same time. Somehow, listening and reading at the same time, I felt I good at my comprehension. But whenever I exported the words to Anki within context of the sentences, I couldn't remember as many words when I wasn't listening.

PvtMarc wrote a post here today where he experienced the same feeling, what he called the illusion of understanding.
http://how-to-learn-any-language.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=804

I spent a good amount of time going through about 200 cards last night, and another 150 today. Of the words that I went through last night, I looked over the text they came from today and was happily surprised at how much better my understanding was. It was even more surprising to me considering I thought that I understood the text quite well before using Anki. Also I'm beginning to feel I can listen to most the text without reading it and not get lost much. I was having more trouble listening without reading before using Anki, but I still need to experiment some more with this.

I''m still using Euronews to listen to Russian news clips with transcripts. I noticed last night, that the Russian news doesn't seem as fast to my ears anymore. I think part of this reason is my ability to read the Cyrillic alphabet has improved, and I can read more quickly and keep up with the newscasters more easily.

[kimchizzle]

My Russian study has slowed a bit since I'm spending time reviewing words with Anki more. But I think it will be worth it in the long run. Eventually I will need to study some grammar, because I get confused about certain things with just listening and reading. For example, Russian seems to use prefixes with verbs a lot, and I'm not always sure how the prefix is changing the verbs or why it is needed.

Once I build my vocabulary to a higher level, I will start with a bit of grammar that confuses me. I'm thinking about going through huliganov youtube series when I feel ready for grammar.

I learned about some really cool French bands yesterday from Sctroyenne's log that I've been listening to a lot. I've been wanting to find more current French bands as I was only familiar with bands that were popular five years ago when I was living in France.

I listened to a Mexican podcast today about history and philosophy. I was able to understand most things due to lots of shared cognates with French in academic language. But listening to Spanish like that with lots of French cognates, I know I experience an illusion of understanding somewhat and feel I understand more of the Spanish than I do.

[kimchizzle]

Russian

The weekend wasn't ideal for my Russian studies. I planned to study some flashcards on Anki but I missed a full day of studies. My mind is not as energetic when studying Russian as it was, I feel myself drifting off of focus more often when studying. I'm hoping things will change this coming week. I may decide not to add more cards to Anki for awhile and just study new material.

A problem I've noticed currently is I seem to confuse Russian words that look similar to me much more often than I would like. For example, толька and точно, I kept getting mixed up. I think it has something to do with unfamiliarity to Cyrillic alphabet still.

[tarvos]

I rather think it's because of the pronounciation. Только* is often pronounced тока in colloquial speech ну я тока что пришел, ты тока это сделала (а ничего другого не занималась)??? and точно (pron. точна) really are just one consonant away from each other. я точно тока что сдал экзамен.

к / ч are even related by palatalization. So it is hard to keep apart.

[Arnaud]

deleted

[tarvos]

-ние is a suffix used to nominalize verbs, yes. It's the "identity of existing as such" присутствовать ("to exist") - присутствие - "existence"

ность - indicates a kind of quality, like личность - personality (лично - personal(ly)) искренность - (sincerity, openness, genuineness) from искренно (sincerely, genuinely, truly)