Materials:
1. unabridged English text of August 1914 (part one of The Red Wheel)
2. unabridged Russian text
3. 48 hours of unabridged Russian audio.
Method:
1. Read a chapter in English
2. L2/R2 several times
3. L2/R1 several times
4. R2 out loud if I ever reach the point of 'natural listening'
5. translate from English to Russian if I ever reach the point of 'natural listening'
6. Go on to next chapter
Starting level:
self assessed B1+ in reading and listening
I scored 72% on a test of the 5000 most common Russian words. 80% is needed to project a B2 reading level.
I can understand 30-40% of a standard Russian TV show without Russian subtitles, and maybe 50-60% with them.
The main problem seems to be lack of vocabulary. However, when I hear a lot of unfamiliar words together I can lose word boundaries as well.
edited to add more details on starting level
The Red Wheel: An Experiment in Listening-Reading
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The Red Wheel: An Experiment in Listening-Reading
Last edited by Xmmm on Wed Mar 14, 2018 7:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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- iguanamon
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Re: The Red Wheel: An Experiment in Listening-Reading
I am looking forward to following your experiment and wish you the best of luck, Xmmm. It remains to be seen whether or not LR of such a literary series of books will lead to the results that you wish to achieve at this level, but it's worth giving it a shot. I probably wouldn't do it this way with this material if I were in your place. I'd want to master simpler language and situations but that's just me. That's why we do experiments anyway.
Vocabulary and grammar repeats with a single author of a series of books. My experience with Haitian Creole has shown me that getting used to listening to one voice does indeed help me to learn to get used to listening to others. You are at B1, so yes, this will be challenging, but you do have a faithful translation to help you which should ease the frustration many people feel when they have to stop to look up too many words or phrases. I've read two of Solzhenitzyn's works "The Gulag Archipelago" and "Cancer Ward". His writing is quite powerful and though it's been years since I read them in English translation, I still remember those books.
Vocabulary and grammar repeats with a single author of a series of books. My experience with Haitian Creole has shown me that getting used to listening to one voice does indeed help me to learn to get used to listening to others. You are at B1, so yes, this will be challenging, but you do have a faithful translation to help you which should ease the frustration many people feel when they have to stop to look up too many words or phrases. I've read two of Solzhenitzyn's works "The Gulag Archipelago" and "Cancer Ward". His writing is quite powerful and though it's been years since I read them in English translation, I still remember those books.
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- reineke
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Re: The Red Wheel: An Experiment in Listening-Reading
You should so totally do this with Turkish!
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Re: The Red Wheel: An Experiment in Listening-Reading
Xmmm wrote:
Starting level: B1+ in reading and listening
It says "Experiment" in the title so I would like to see more detailed "Starting level" and learning history to compare Ending level with.
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Re: The Red Wheel: An Experiment in Listening-Reading
reineke wrote:You should so totally do this with Turkish!
I totally want to do this with Turkish!
I think by the time I find a well known Turkish novel with unabridged audio and a good translation, I should be just about wrapping August 1914 up.
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Re: The Red Wheel: An Experiment in Listening-Reading
Intensive listening-reading - wonderful idea! I love experiments. Make sure to give us regular updates. I'm especially interested in how you'll manage to stick with repeating the same chapter over and over (five times minimum by my count) without getting sick of it all. Best of luck to you!
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Re: The Red Wheel: An Experiment in Listening-Reading
I completed chapter one. Only 81 more chapters to go for this part one of The Red Wheel.
Read English.
R2/L2->R2/L1
R2/L2->R2/L1
R2/L2->R2/L1
It was tough to get through the last round. I skipped steps 4 (read L2 out loud) and 5 (translate L1 to L2) because I'm not yet at the level of "natural listening". Hopefully I'll get there before the end of the book, though I have my doubts.
I see that Solzhenitsyn (где же ваши принципы?) and Каста (где же мой убер?) both use the где же construction. That's really not relevant to anything, but I think "classical L-R" makes you a bit punchy.
I've noticed that a lot of these experiments get derailed because the experimenter starts deviating from the original plan. I'm going to try not to do that. I will try to read each chapter once in English, then do three rounds of R2/L2 followed by R2/L1. That way if I have glorious success, it's easy for someone else to reproduce it. And if I fail, someone can say "you did it wrong, should have been four rounds."
Read English.
R2/L2->R2/L1
R2/L2->R2/L1
R2/L2->R2/L1
It was tough to get through the last round. I skipped steps 4 (read L2 out loud) and 5 (translate L1 to L2) because I'm not yet at the level of "natural listening". Hopefully I'll get there before the end of the book, though I have my doubts.
I see that Solzhenitsyn (где же ваши принципы?) and Каста (где же мой убер?) both use the где же construction. That's really not relevant to anything, but I think "classical L-R" makes you a bit punchy.
I've noticed that a lot of these experiments get derailed because the experimenter starts deviating from the original plan. I'm going to try not to do that. I will try to read each chapter once in English, then do three rounds of R2/L2 followed by R2/L1. That way if I have glorious success, it's easy for someone else to reproduce it. And if I fail, someone can say "you did it wrong, should have been four rounds."
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Re: The Red Wheel: An Experiment in Listening-Reading
Out of interest...
How long is the audio for each chapter?
And how long do the 4 passes take in total?
How long is the audio for each chapter?
And how long do the 4 passes take in total?
1 x
Kwiziq
A0:
A1:
A2:
B1:
B2:
A0:
A1:
A2:
B1:
B2:
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Re: The Red Wheel: An Experiment in Listening-Reading
Also, can you give us some ballpark estimates about the word/page/sentence count? Gotta have that data
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Re: The Red Wheel: An Experiment in Listening-Reading
Bex wrote:Out of interest...
How long is the audio for each chapter?
And how long do the 4 passes take in total?
Axon wrote:Also, can you give us some ballpark estimates about the word/page/sentence count? Gotta have that data
Lol.
There are 48 hours of audio and 82 chapters, so the average chapter is about 35 minutes. Chapter 1 was 33 minutes.
So completing the steps is 15 minutes to read the English plus 6*33 = 213 minutes, or roughly 3.5 hours.
August 1914 is 896 pages in English paperback. I only have kindle versions in both languages, so I'd have to guess at word counts. 150 wpm * 48 * 60 is 432,000 words ... but that seems a little high. The paperback would be in pretty small type. Maybe the narrator is slower.
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