neofight78 wrote: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
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