neofight78 returns from his Siberian exile? [RU, ES]

[neofight78]

Wonderful news! It's superb that you're progressing. You know, I have heard that all Russian natives have about Upper-Intermediate level in Russian. So, soon you will probably know more than natives do. Especially in writing.

Thanks I wish it were true that all Russian natives were around upper-intermidate, but I'm certain they'd all run rings around me. But the more I can close that gap the better...

[neofight78]

I've passed a couple of milestones this week. I've finished my first book in Russian, Голова профессора Доуэля! This is definitely good news, mainly because it means I can now read a second, and then a third....

Second book Человек-амфибия read! And on to the third... I'm continuing with Беляев, which should mean I can start ramping up my speed a bit. I want to try to get through two chapters most days. My first books took 6 weeks, my second a month, so I'm going to aim for 3 to 4 weeks for my third book. A bit further down the line I'll attempt a book written by the Стругацкие brothers. That'll be more challenging than Беляев's rather simple style, which is why I'm not going to rush into it. Anyhow next up is Ариэль...

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Following up again on some of my recent musings...

Extensive reading - Going well, just trying to ramp up reading speed now. I've have vague plans to get myself in shape to tackle the Super Challenge when it next comes round.

Working with a TV series - I've started working a little bit on Кухня. My level of comprehension here is pretty good, but there are parts where I don't understand as well as I should do for my level. This mainly seems to consist of not being so great at more lower register language and slang, as well as pure listening ability letting me down in places. Some intensive work along with picking up some of the lower register stuff seems to be working well, but I'm really struggling to get this into my schedule.

Writing feedback - As mentioned previously I've got the ball rolling on this. At some point I'll need to up the quantity, but getting going is the main thing. I've decided to follow Tarvos's example and work with a tutor. Online corrections (italki / lang-8 / LingQ etc) tend to suffer from overcorrection and a lack of explanation. My writing is still at B2 level, I need to suss out what needs to be done to take it to C1. Probably more a question of style rather than range of vocabulary and constructions I would think. I need to put the question to a tutor really.

Speech feedback - This all depends on tiredness and subject matter, but in principle I'm not making too many mistakes and I can talk about nearly anything. The instances where I grind to a halt or really foul up are getting rare. What once used to be my weakest skill is probably my strongest area now. This has probably been true for quite some time now, but my speed has received a nice boost after 9 months in Russia. This is mostly about rounding things out and weeding out any persistent mistakes before they become fossilised.

Business stuff - Still mulling this one over. Not successfully found the kind of book I'm looking for. I've found a business English book for Russians with a glossary, so I may start learning some terminology from that. I've held off so far due to time pressures. We'll see...

Meta stuff - As always prioritising is a problem, so there will be plenty more musing. I think I'm finally hitting the turning point where I can get more immersion into my routine rather than old school study. It will still probably take a good while, but cranking up the exposure is what I need to be doing now. I've used native material pretty much from the beginning, but only now is it becoming possible to use it in an extensive manner. I'm not quite in a position to throwaway the grammar books or the vocab cards, so there will be some tension between the two for some time longer.

Finally, as if I haven't pimped this enough, I would be happy to hook up with other Russian learners on goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/neofight78

[Ani]

Russian learners or Russian learners who can actually read books in Russian I'd be glad to add you on goodreads but my books are only in French for now. Hopefully next year!

[neofight78]

Best get cracking then!

[neofight78]

I'm about two thirds of the way though Ариэль after two weeks, so I'm on track to finish the book after 3 weeks.

Revising some of my earlier thoughts...

Working with a TV series - I've hit more of a routine with Кухня now. I'm trying to do a little everyday, basically I'm aiming to add 5 unknown words from the transcript to Anki each day. Afterward I play through that part of the episode, repeating a few times any bits that my ears can't decipher first time. Once I get through a whole episode I go through it with a tutor to decypher the stuff that I couldn't work out or find in dictionaries, again with the aim of creating flashcards, this time including sentence cards. I'm only at the end of the second episode so we'll see how this goes.

Writing feedback - Struggling to get enough of this done, and I need to up the quantity to make it worthwhile. It doesn't take long to go through what I've written with a tutor at this stage on account of their being so little This is 50% lack of time and 50% procrastination. I need to work out way to get this properly into my routine.

Speech feedback - After a couple of tutoring lessons, the corrections are getting few and far between. In fact most are just filling the odd vocabulary gap. I think it's probably right to deemphasise this currently and work on weaker areas.

[neofight78]

I managed to finish Ариэль in three weeks like I wanted. My next book is again one of Беляев's after which I plan to move on to other authors (this is old news for those following me on goodreads). Продавец воздуха has 21 chapters, which nicely pans out as three weeks of one chapter a day.

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I'm already a couple of chapters in, and this books seems a little different in that it's written in the first person. The last two books have been about people with super human abilities given to them by scientists. This doesn't seem to be the case for Продавец воздуха so far, which makes for a nice change.

I'm still plodding away with Кухня. Currently I've got a lot of slang and conversational expressions and constructions to assimilate. In theory this will start to drop off once I get a grip on all the common words and phrases. It also shows how I need to put some more effort into lower register language. I probably need to tackle high register stuff too, I seem to remember complaining about this in log some time back. It can wait for now though.

I should be hitting the 7,500 word mark in Anki later this month. Most of the new added words have come straight from my reading, with a result I've probably raised the average number of known words by 10% for Веляев's books. The reading fluency is coming on quite well because of it, but then Веляев's style is fairly simple. We'll see what happens when I start hitting more complex books. Hopefully I can wrangle it so that I can increase the complexity gradually over time.

The summer school at the University is turning out to be a bit naff. The students in my group who were around B2 have gone home, and have been replaced with students that are probably at around B1. I'm told that usually there are more capable students during summer. Looks like I've been unlucky. We'll see what will be in September, I'm hoping there will be some more students at my level. Although more importantly I hope to get my work permit! Money is running out alarming quickly now!...

[neofight78]

A mini update:

This week I hit 7,500 words in Anki and 50% of the way through Продавец воздуха. Two essentially meaningless but nonetheless pleasant milestones

I'm also going to be stopping the technical russian lessons over the next month. Money is getting tighter and the value from the lessons is getting less, so it doesn't make much sense to continue anymore at this stage.

Кухня is plodding along ok. Writing on the other isn't really happening, I need to figure something out on that front...

[neofight78]

Reading

I finished Продавец воздуха on schedule. I really enjoyed this book, it was more coherent than the other books and the political side of it is as relevant as ever what with the US pulling of the Paris Agreement. Anyhow this concludes my Беляев binge and I'm onto the next author and book: Григорий Адамов's novel Тайна двух океанов.

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Apparently Адамов did bucket loads of research on oceanography to write it, so there could be some interesting facts hidden in there. The book is about three times as long as those I've read so far, so it could take 2-3 months to get through. Being a new author I could be defeated by the complexity of the language or boredom before I get there, but hopefully neither of those possibilities will strike.

Grammar

For a while now I've been alternately working through chapters from a book on aspect (I only have the PDF and don't know the proper title), Living Russian Grammar Intermediate II, and Living Russian Grammar Advanced. Steady progress is being made, although whether I ever get the hang of aspect is to be seen.

Кухня

I've now been through and deciphered to one extent or another four episodes, and I'm now going to rewatch the first episode several times to really consolidate stuff. So far there are only one or two places where I can't quite catch what's being said first time. Of course comprehension is nearing 100%. I'm going to establish a sort of pipeline where I'll be working on several episodes at once, with each being in a different stage:

• Go through, creating flashcards for new words
• Go through episode with a tutor decyhpering anything that I don't understand. Again creating flashcards for new constructions and phrases etc.
• Learn the flashcards generated from the first two stages
• Re watch several times, stopping and rewind to review anything that isn't 100% heard / understood.

Time will tell whether this will pan out, or will end up being yet another discarded plan

Meta

Writing has fallen by the wayside, but I think I'm content to leave it for now. Rather I'm preferring to ramp up my skills to C1 one by one. At the moment I'm pushing to get my reading to C1, I'm feeling fairly confident that I'm making good progress here. Anyhow, this is where I think I'm at relative to C1 (self assessed):

• Vocabulary - there or thereabouts.
• Grammar - mostly there I think, I should probably get round to doing that mock test I was talking about to find the gaps.
• Speaking - there or thereabouts, mistakes are few and the frequency with which I become unstuck is getting less and less.
• Reading - still some way to go, but making good progress on it at the moment.
• Listening - improved on my weak B2 level for sure, pretty variable results, needs work.
• Writing - pretty poor, too many silly mistakes and not enough complicated constructions. With a few exceptions I'm using the same constructions as in my speech, rather than using all that fancy stuff the characterises formal writing.

If I decide I want to subject myself to the TRKI-3 exam then there will be a few extra bits to learn of top of a rounded C1 to cover the favourite tricks / hobbyhorses of the examiners.

Word of the day

рак-отшельник

[neofight78]

Three chapters into Тайна двух океанов and it's certainly tougher going than Беляев. In terms of percentage of words known it's better than when I first started reading Беляев, but raising that percentage seems to be harder. The higher base percentage seems to suggest to me that there is some kind of core story telling vocabulary. I guess there are two reasons for it being harder to raise this percentage, one the chapters are a bit longer and two the vocabulary is much more varied, there doesn't seem to much in the way of high frequency words that give more bang for your buck. Syntactically Тайна двух океанов is more complicated, it's not that difficult per se, but there are more participles which often seems to throw the Kindle dictionary. In short, I don't think I was wrong in saying that it will take a few months to get through. Perhaps in a few more chapters time I'll start to see more repetition of vocabulary and things will ease up, we'll see...

[neofight78]

Quite a few more chapters into Тайна двух океанов and things are certainly easier. It's the descriptions of ocean stuff that get difficult, descriptions of technical stuff are ok. It doesn't help that plenty of words/word forms seem to throw the kindle dictionary for six. I'm not quite up to Беляев levels of reading ease, but % words known is slowly getting there. Because the chapters are longer it can be difficult to fit in every day, especially as I read every chapter twice, once at my own pace and once following along to the audiobook. In any case I'm progressing quite well and will shortly finish "Part I".

In my log I've muttered a few times about doing a mock TRKI-3 exam to see where I'm at. Well, we did the grammar & vocabulary part at University last week. I got a healthy score of 85% and the mistakes were fairly evenly spread i.e. there weren't any weak spots revealed. This means that I'm looking at three areas where I'm perhaps not up to C1 yet: reading, writing and listening. I should probably try a mock paper for reading, I might already be there or not far off it.

I've signed up to the end of November with the University, hopefully by which time I'll have received my work permit. After which I should get a good deal busier. Whilst I'm not biting at the chomp to sit the exam, it could make sense to go for it in this period. It would mean focussing heavily on writing and listening, and having to ditch or limit my current routine, which I'm not sure I want to do. We'll see....