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

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neofight78
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Re: neofight78's Wayward Ramble to Russian Fluency Продолжается!

Postby neofight78 » Fri Sep 15, 2017 3:53 pm

Ok, an update on the job front. I've had four job interviews now and received two job offers, one of which I've accepted. I had anticipated to be waiting a bit longer for my work permit so I had paid for groups lessons at the university up to the end of November. I've managed to get them exchanged for individual lessons, which given they are much more expensive, now means my course will finish at the end of this month. Bearing in mind that'll I'll be getting my passport with the work permit at around the same time, I'll be starting work from 2nd October. Whoop whoop! :D

Well, at least I'm excited whilst the dull drudgery of work hasn't yet hit me full force :lol:

Two of the interviews were in a mix of Russian and English and two were purely in Russian. In the first interview we got about halfway through in Russian and then they suggest I switched to English as it was evident I struggled a little with the technical side. -1 points. In the last interview, after all the technical questions, the guy asked how long I'd been learning Russian and said that he couldn't do that well in an English interview. +1 points.

In short my business and technical Russian still needs work, but is good enough to acquit myself in interviews. Hopefully I should pick most of this stuff up organically after I've been working a while.

In terms of my individual lessons, I've asked to work on listening and writing with an eye to sometime taking TRKI-3. All with a bit of business Russian mixed in. Although I'm somewhat put off taking the exam by this post :?

On Thursday, we did some listening exercises, which were somewhat enlightening. We started with listening to some short phone calls. For each phone call there were two questions. I had no problem getting the answers right, however when the teacher asked any additional questions I could never answer. Then we switched to a longer recording of a presentation about negotiation. There were a bunch of statements which had to be marked as whether they were a fair summary of what was said or not. Here I had no problem answering either the set questions (of which there were quote a few) and the questions of the teacher. Obviously the format of listening exercises has a big influence on the result rather than the actual difficulty of the speech. I guess this all backs up the memory theory.

As the interviews and test tasks has now calmed down, I've started to chip away a bit at the flashcard backlog. Ideally I'd like to get through it all by the time I start work. Let's see....
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Ani
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Re: neofight78's Wayward Ramble to Russian Fluency Продолжается!

Postby Ani » Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:27 pm

Congrats on the job!! And getting through two interviews fully in Russian is so impressive. I'm sure you'll learn a ton in the new environment, which will hopefully stave off the drudgery part for a while :)
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Re: neofight78's Wayward Ramble to Russian Fluency Продолжается!

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Fri Sep 29, 2017 11:21 pm

Just finishing up reading all the posts in your log, I must first congratulate you on your getting a job in Russia! Hey ho, as you might say. :) What an exemplary tale of learning a language you tell. A series of general plans, realistic expectations, tactics, assessments, reassessments, tests, mock tests, practice and a full-bore use of different materials. And the language you learned is one of the toughest for us native English speakers to learn. Well done! I look forward to following your progress with your Russian and your job.
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neofight78
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Re: neofight78 returns from his Siberian exile [ES]?

Postby neofight78 » Thu Dec 31, 2020 7:25 am

Yikes, 3 years since I last posted or studied Russian! Starting work again and also the appearance of a small language learning troll in the household has rather reduced my time for such activities. However my current work situation may result in me relocating to Spain. Perhaps it's possible to live in Spain without knowing any Spanish, but I've always been of the persuasion that if you are going to live somewhere for an extended period of time, you should make an effort to learn the language. Plus I can't imagine not being able to talk to the large majority of the population!

Of course it would be quite cool to learn a second foreign language, to see how the experience compares with he first time, but also maybe to experiment a bit with the process itself. A quite like the idea of having a "silent period" before jumping into speaking, so no doubt I will make good use of LingQ again. But definitely looking for tips and resources for learning Spanish with the focus on reading and listening. If you guys can share some good resources with me it would be much appreciated!
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neofight78
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Re: neofight78 returns from his Siberian exile [ES]?

Postby neofight78 » Thu Dec 31, 2020 7:32 am

I should also say it would be interesting to know what new resources / products have appeared in the market over the last 3 years. I'm sure my knowledge is seriously out of date on that score!
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Teango
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Re: neofight78 returns from his Siberian exile [ES]?

Postby Teango » Thu Dec 31, 2020 9:37 am

С возвращением, Нио! Хорошо, что ты снова пишешь на форуме. Между прочим, что ты думаешь о сериале Нэтфликса "Ферзевый гамбит"?
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neofight78
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Re: neofight78 returns from his Siberian exile [ES]?

Postby neofight78 » Thu Dec 31, 2020 5:50 pm

Спасибо, Teango! Често говоря, я не смотрел Ферзевый гамбит, не смотря на хорошие отзывы. Регистрировать на сайте Netflix ради одного сериала не хочу. Интереснее играть в шахматы чем смотреть :)
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neofight78
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Re: neofight78 returns from his Siberian exile [ES]?

Postby neofight78 » Thu Dec 31, 2020 7:49 pm

Ok, first baby steps taken in a new language on the first day of a new year!

Stared with Glossika in listen only mode (first time using it), also fired up my trusty favourite LingQ. I took a look at Duolingo and Rosetta Stone but neither allows an input only approach.

Spanish vocabulary so far seems easier. I guess there is still some residual French from school and a little Brazilian Portuguese from my late teens plus English cognates. But I could be jumping to conclusions here, not much ground covered yet given it’s the first day and every word is a new one.

Here we go!...
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: neofight78 returns from his Siberian exile [ES]?

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Thu Dec 31, 2020 8:02 pm

neofight78 wrote:But definitely looking for tips and resources for learning Spanish with the focus on reading and listening. If you guys can share some good resources with me it would be much appreciated!

If you check in only every 3 years, keeping up with your log is going to be easy. :lol:

Others on the forum have a lot more expertise than I, but here is something for starters: LLORG's Spanish Resources .
Note thatDestinos and Veinte Mundos were once go-go resources, but they have bit the dust.
There is also a Spanish Group at LLORG Spanish Group
When you say reading and listening, I assume you're looking for something usable with LingQ. I suspect your best bet there will be LingQ's own library.
However, right now I am working with a good book called La Regenta by Leopoldo Alas (aka Clarín) and published in 1884 and 1885 (according to Wikipedia), for which there is a librivox recording La Regenta Tome I, and there is a Tome II as well. This is a very long book. The paperback of Tome I is 662 pages long. I tried the Kindle text, but it skimps on notes that I need, so I am trying this version of Tome 1.
Another novel that I found useful was what has become a classic, Gabriel García Márquez's Cien Años de Soledad, which you can probably buy everywhere. This is an (apparently) copyright-free audio of it, but I no longer remember the source.

Welcome back! Happy New Year!

Edited 1 time to say Destinos is NOT dead. Sorry.
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

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neofight78
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Re: neofight78 returns from his Siberian exile? [ES]

Postby neofight78 » Fri Jan 01, 2021 10:48 am

Thanks for the links Mork. I'll be checking out that thread to see if there is something useful for me. I'm currently at A0 so some stuff will need to wait. Very firmly in the early familiarisation stages.

Only on my second day (if you count days as before and after sleep, as I started late last night). Still it's somehow surprising how effective LingQ is even from the very start. Not sure how effective Glossika will be purely on listening mode, but let's see. Should be fine to at least get some familiarity with the language. If there are any other tools that are input only (or can be used as such), I'm all ears (no pun intended!). I do remember previously trying out some "Earworms" tracks but the spacing was too even, so that I'd get confused as to which English word corresponded with which L2 word.
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