Adventures in bad memory, Russian

[MamaPata]

I actually disagree with Xmmm in regards to LWT (though with the caveat that I have only ever used it for languages where I had a solid base of prior study). I do think it teaches you to recognise words, particularly if you are reading one book/on one topic. Yes, there are going to be uncommon words that you have added but not learnt (though those won't actually come up as words you know, but words you are learning/are unknown). The others, by virtue of the effort and repetition will start to sink in.

I don't remember entirely what you are doing now other than grammar and vocab, would you mind telling us some of your other activities?

[drmweaver2]

As far as my Russian goes process-wise, I'm doing Anki, LWT and a fair bit of YouTube video watching for the audio. I've watched hours and hours of YT grammar vids, two TV series using captions, probably 15 films (2-4 times each) and tried listening to Russian pop-rock, a few podcasts on different subjects, and even NHK's Russian language news podcasts. Additional vocab and grammar-related "work" has involved Glossika, Pimsleur and textbook/audio coursework (I've dabbled with DLI, FSI and Michel Thomas but finally settled on Assimil after quite a bit of "dithering").

At first, I had a fairly regimented daily schedule, but that (de-?)evolved to something a bit more fluid at about the 30-day mark. By the 45th day (beginning/mid-Oct), I was already looking for something different than what I was doing (Anki 3-4x daily, 2 Glossika GSM and GSR sessions [4 lessons]/day, 1-2 Pimsleur lessons/day, and 1-3 hours of LWT...). I kind of "forgot" I am a false beginner and was mostly recovering "lost" knowledge up 'til then - probably a mistake mentally.

Since mid-Oct, like I said, I've dabbled with a few different courses and books found-online, on fleaBay or given to me trying to find a "magic key" to maintain the progress rate I had at first, almost definitely with a detrimental cost. My rate of "progress" noticeably slowed down as far as gaining (recovering?) vocab and that was demotivating. I'm pretty sure now that being a false beginner likely created a false sense of accomplishment.

I agree that LWT and Anki can be deceptively addictive as well as falsely influencing one's belief that actual "learning" has occured - ex., am I remembering a word from the image I've associated on an Anki card or do I actually know the word (L1>L2>L1) AND, as was mentioned regarding LWT, did I "just click" so many hundreds/thousands of times on an unknown word, occasionally changing the status to suggest to myself that I've actually made progress? I'm all but convinced that I started using LWT with too small a vocabulary for it to be truly useful given the texts I threw at it. But that's MY fault, not that of the program/tool itself.

I don't intend to drop Russian. That's not even a consideration. I like Russian. I do have short term goals with it, though they are harder to quantify for me in terms of accomplishing my long term goal of reading LotR. I mean, does anyone have a known-to-be-successful blueprint for going from A0.5 to reading LotR? If so, please point me to it. I certainly don't have one and this idea of self-studying a language, any language, is something I'm still trying to figure out. 4-skill-wise, reading is my priority, listening is 2nd, writing and speaking are distant tied-for-3rds.

Anyway, I'm still wondering about the Thai thing...

[StringerBell]

I mean, does anyone have a known-to-be-successful blueprint for going from A0.5 to reading LotR? If so, please point me to it.

There is a simple formula for what you want to do: time spent with the language + positive mental attitude + perseverance

It's an extremely simple formula, but that doesn't mean it's easy. It's not easy. There is no easy way to reach a really ambitious goal. And learning a language to a high level of proficiency is a really ambitious goal. It's kind of like becoming a doctor or an engineer. You can't just spend a couple of weeks or months on it, it takes years of studying, practice, contact, whatever you want to call it, every day for a long time to learn the skills you need. How long does it take? It depends on the language and about hundred other factors, not the least of which is your mental attitude.

Lots of people in the world - and on this forum - have accomplished the kind of feat you want to accomplish, so it is very doable. But it requires consistency and flexibility (changing your routine when it feels stale, for example).

Steve Kaufman made a video about how in the beginning, learning a new language feels very rewarding because you make rapid progress acquiring basic words and phrases, but as you continue, the amount of time and effort that you need to make noticeable improvements seems to increase exponentially.

I suggest this video, he describes what you seem to be experiencing:

[drmweaver2]

Moving forward... slowly, deliberating but, weirdly -> without a lot of enthusiasm right now.

Started @8am... worked in 15-30 min "pomodoro type" sessions...
Glossika Lvl 2 - 2 GSM lessons, 2 GSR lessons - check
....(I've gone "back" to doing Glossika as it's easy to keep track of, repeatable and "structured" to some extent).
Anki - 30 new words today - check
..... - 200 reviews this morning - check.
LWT for an hour - graded reader, probably A2 level - check.
......(Difficulty for me - more difficult than I feel it should have been, but there was some new vocab today.)
LWT - an hour - NHK Russian podcast/newscast article - check
.........ex., article - Mike Pence will visit Japan next week. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ru/news/116134/
Anki - made 50 new cards based off the 2 LWT sessions above

Time now: 1:30PM...mentally 6/10 and I need about a 2 hour break (roughly twice as long as needed 3 weeks ago)
(will likely continue to "explore"/research the idea of learning Thai during this break as that's just not going away right now.)

Later today:
a. 1-3 pages LWT/LotR,
b. watch/re-watch 3 scenes of LotR with Russian dub/subtitles (~15 mins total)
c. 2 Assimil Russian lessons (passive wave)

Shrug... if I had the enthusiasm I had just 3 weeks ago, this wouldn't have seemed as daunting as it did when I started this morning
... and I'd be 7.5-8.5/10 mentally right now.

[drmweaver2]

:hangs head in shame... I drank the KoolAid...
After a week of messing around with the idea of learning Thai, I finally decided to commit to it... max 1 hour a day of "concentrated effort", though I probably will also mess around with it during breaks from Russian. Someone on this forum has a log titled something like "only if/while it's fun" and that's the approach I'm going to take with Thai. As soon as it is no longer "fun", the idea of learning Thai's gonna end.

I've been surprised at the wealth of materials and advice wrt learning Thai available for beginners. As usual, there are "competing" theories, methods & advice about how (best) to go about it. I chose the "learn the alphabet/script and pronunciation of the letters" route. So, there it is. Commitment, such as it is.

What is my ultimate goal as far as Thai goes? Who the hell knows? I still have no idea why this idea popped up in the first place so it follows that I have no idea how far I'll play along.

As for Russian, see my previous post about my daily routine and copy it to today... add 1 hour of grammar drill exercise work using Terence Wade's Russian Grammar Workbook - worked on accusative case noun endings.

That's about it.
Then again, "isn't that enough? comes a throaty whisper from the deep, dark recesses of what passes for my gray matter.

Edited: added the word "script" in para 2

[drmweaver2]

I have to say that I AM having fun with Thai... I knew absolutely nothing about it... culture-wise or language-wise. After approximately 7 hours of YT "lessons" and 3 DLI course lessons, my ear has made enough progress for me to say with certainty that I can't hear any differences in tones! None! Nada!

That may be a problem in the future

But I have made some "significant-to-me" progress with vocab and VERY basic grammar/sentence pattern recognition. Fun stuff!

In the land of the "continental-sized-country's language", Russian, on the other hand... continuing to plod along deliberately. I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that reading The Hobbit, let alone reading LotR by New Year's is pretty much not possible for me. Too much new grammar, too many unrecognized words, too few "okay, I feel like I'm making some kind of noticeable progress here" moments. Oh, and too few days left in the year to overcome the previous 3 points.

Maybe I should reassess/re-define my Russian goal, you say? Then I'm afraid that I'll wind up in the same place as with Thai - why do it? I can't explain the association I have with Russian and LotR... I honestly can't - but it's there. The chance of me going to Russia is slim to the point of non-existence. And I have no interest in "traditional"/classical Russian literature. But I like the language itself and I have a interest based on and dating from my military service days.

Put in my hour of Thai already! Felt I wanted more but held myself to the 1 hour limit.
Got in 4 hours of Russian audio so far today. YT videos, Glossika, an Assimil lesson and some "junk" Russian podcast I stumbled across (10% comprehension there...whoohoo!?!?)
Lunch time.. then back to it.

[drmweaver2]

I cheated and spent a bit more time today/this afternoon "having at" learning theThai script --- again.

Slow progress... very slow... still fun, though.

It kinda reminds me of a semester at college when one of my favorite Geography professors tried to get me interested in Mayan glyphs while I was working towards a PhD in Communications. While I found them interesting to an extent, I wasn't really "interested" in them if you get my drift. She was convinced I would be, so I did my best to get interested - to no avail. They remained just "pictures" to me despite my best efforts - even after spending about 6 weeks developing a computer program to try to help me understand them. I guess I have no "artistic sense". I certainly had no ability to assign meaning to the glyphs and then remember those associations.

The difference between then and now is that, with Thai, I have audio to go with the associations/memories ....um, yeah. Okay....

[drmweaver2]

I'm not sure why, but I decided to go looking for Russian pop music today...

LOTS of fun. My ears thanked me for 2 hours!

I watched YT videos and listened to a number of "new to me" artists/groups including Polina Gagarina, Ani Lorak, Bna Gra, Irina Allegroba and Slava - oh, I forgot to include Ksenia Lavrinova (Afonina). I found the lyrics to what I was watching/listening to and followed along for the whole time. Good fun. It was interesting and encouraging to find that I could mostly understand about half the songs when reading the Russian captions/lyrics.

One song by Polina Gagarina, Kykyschka (Cuckoos), was from a movie, Battle for Sevastopol which I found was free to watch online. The closed captions (both Russian and English) were auto-generated, but close enough to capture/follow most of the details of the story. So there went another bit of time today. Very fun.

I should probably do this more often.

added 1 pop artist

[drmweaver2]

As I've decided to stick with Thai for the foreseeable future, I updated the log's title.

Thai: Started Memrise's Thai Alphabet Crash Course today. In my first Memrise session, I've consolidated a number of the most common consonants/consonant scripts and associated names/sounds. This is much better progress than I have had with other tools/methods. I haven't been a Memrise fan as far as Russian goes, but it seems to work for me Thai Alphabet-wise. Glad I remembered it/tried it! (It's not rocket-science, it's magic!)

Russian: I spent hours and hours at the Veteran's Administration (US military veteran's) hospital today - mostly sitting and waiting to see people. I'd brought along my mp3 player and listened to Glossika GSR files while I was waiting...and waiting...and waiting for my name to be called/to see who I needed to see. I wound up listening to Lvl 1 GSR files Day 10-25 before my first "contact" with the VA patient screening bureaucrat. Then I listened to another 8 GSR files before a 2nd bureaucrat deigned to interview and process my papers, and a further 10 GSR files while waiting for the actual medico to examine me. While I wasn't impressed with the overall experience at the VA itself, I am glad I was able to make positive use of the downtime.

[drmweaver2]

I decided to "take" one of those "what size is your vocabulary" tests... Totally ridiculous result ensued.

The test estimated that I knew approximately 7400 Russian words.
Absolutely ridiculous. There's no freakin' way that I know even a third that many. Trust me on that.

How can I be so sure about my estimate versus the test's estimate? Pretty simple.
I keep an Excel spreadsheet of all words that I have learned (95%+ accurate), am learning (99% accurate) and/or have only been exposed to once but haven't even got "recognition status" with(better than 90% accurate list and this part of the list is over 7000 words by itself). This includes variations based on declension, conjugation, number (sgl/pl), etc. I even include cognates/"near cognates" in the spreadsheet. (My "ability to track this accurately mostly has to do with working with LWT (mostly from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) and diligently typing entries into the spreadsheet from each Glossika, Pimsleur, Assimil, whatever lesson I work on; and of course, all of my Anki words are in there.

Even being generous with myself, I stand by the I don't "know even a third of that estimate" number.

I wonder how many others have run across such an erroneous test estimate of their vocabulary.
Edited to add: Last sentence was rhetorical...not actually a question looking for a response.