Not all those who wander are lost

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Thu Mar 10, 2022 5:50 am

I’m happy to be starting out in Russian. The language is a beast, just as I suspected. I also bet that it will get easier once cyrillic starts to be more automatic. I mean I can sound out words, kind of sort of, but it isn’t very fast. I realise that I have a million things to learn about Russian case marking, and I haven’t even figured out yet whether Russian conjugation is complicated or not. :D

I realise that there are many people who speak Russian here in the forum, and several native speakers. Please feel free to correct me if I say something stupid. :lol:

I have limited ambitions for my Russian. I would love to be able to read Tolstoy and Pasternack. I would love to be able to read their books aloud and be comprehensible to a native speaker. It would be nice to be able to be a polite tourist, if I ever get to Russia. My current approach is to do Pimsleur and Michel Thomas slowly and thoroughly, and also complete a deck I made from the memrise Russian courses 1-7. After that I would shadow through the three Assimil books (two “with ease” books and one “using” book) and the old Russian glossika course.
At that point I would start slamming into a novel or two, with a dictionary in hand.

Anyway, that is the plan so far. I may drop some of this if it seems that I just don’t need that much work. I have a copy of the old Russian without toil book from the 50’s, and in some ways I am tempted just to skip everything else and work with that book and see how far it goes… I wonder…

While I’m doing all of this in my Russian study time I’m reading several books at the same time that are either Russian or about Russia (in translation of course). One of the books is Doctor Zhivago. I wonder if sweet Larissa will start to haunt my dreams as she did so long ago when I first read the novel. :D
11 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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stell
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby stell » Thu Mar 10, 2022 1:26 pm

sfuqua wrote:I’m happy to be starting out in Russian.
Welcome to the club! There are a lot of us here! :D
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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Fri Mar 18, 2022 4:04 am

We are moving steadily into Spring here in California. My wife's health is getting better and better. She doesn't look like someone who is sick; I can almost see how the doctors had a hard time believing that she was actually sick. I've seen the lab reports; it wasn't all in her head.
My own health is doing better right now also. I developed atrial fibrillation about three months ago, and in general was told that, well that's it, there isn't a lot you can do about it. I complained and a cardiologist told me that there were several things they could try. She said, well, the simplest is this medicine, but don't get my hopes up. I took the medicine, and my heart returned to a normal rhythm overnight. Very cool. I feel 20 years younger...
I continue to be infatuated with Russian.
I've decided to increase the pressure a little and I have just started New Russian with Ease, the Spanish version. I find that the whole process is fun, as long as I keep my anki cards per day down. I keep changing parameters with anki to make things a little harder or a little easier.
My first impressions of Russian are mixed. First, it is absolutely important to get Cyrillic out of the way first. I'm not quite there yet, but all of a sudden, as the alphabet becomes clearer and more automatic, all of sudden, there are a bunch of my Indo-European language friends. Russian has some consonant clusters that are hard for English speakers, but I'm making progress on these. I'm concerned that I am messing up the two different trilled r's in Russian; my trilled r can be unreliable in Spanish. I may have to get help from this pretty soon, before I fossilise. I need to read and study Russian phonology some more. So far I've been shadowing the Assimil lessons, and I think that I would be comprehensible to a Russian speaker. I've tried slowing the sound down to look at the details and then speeding it up to speak at the regular "slow'' in the first lessons' ' Assimil speed.
Assimil's el nuevo ruso sin esfuerzo seems to be a good example of the middle generation of "with ease" books. My Spanish is good enough that the translations aren't a problem. This book starts off with a bunch of words which are completely inadequate to teach the alphabet, but which don't hurt either. ENRSE is similar to the earlier _Russian without Toil_ in general outline, but the lessons are not exactly the same. One thing that I like about the book is that about halfway through it abandons the usual Assimil pattern of paragraphs and conversations and seems to be doing paragraphs from books. I haven't read all of the lessons yet, so I may have missed something. I'm going to move through the book with my usual Assimil shadowing as fast as I can, but no faster. I'm going to follow along the shadowing with anki cards both passive and active. I offset the active cards by 703 cards, so that it imitates the active and passive waves. I've set up tts voices for the cards.
I know that Dr. Arguelles in his original description of shadowing talked a lot about blind shadowing, shadowing material that you don't understand and using it as a pronunciation exercise. This never made sense to me. I start off shadowing assimil while looking at the L1 page so that I learn the meaning of the L2, before I look at the L2. When I look at the L2, I hopefully can figure out anything I am doing wrong with the pronunciation. I repeat the lessons over a series of days; at least two weeks.

I haven't read Dr. Zhivago since I was a teenager. I found Lara very attractive, as I think the author intended. Weirdly enough, I didn't really notice the child abuse that happens to her in the early part of the book, the abuse that warps the rest of her life. Since I was a teenager myself, I guess I thought that her relationship with Komarovsky was a scandal, not actual abuse of a minor. Now after years or working with kids, the sicker aspects of the relationship are obvious. I wonder what else I missed on my first read.

I guess I really do have a crush on Russian. I'm watching a movie in Spanish, and I don't have an overwhelming urge to drop everything and study Spanish...
11 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Mar 18, 2022 6:37 am

sfuqua wrote:I know that Dr. Arguelles in his original description of shadowing talked a lot about blind shadowing, shadowing material that you don't understand and using it as a pronunciation exercise. This never made sense to me. I start off shadowing assimil while looking at the L1 page so that I learn the meaning of the L2, before I look at the L2. When I look at the L2, I hopefully can figure out anything I am doing wrong with the pronunciation. I repeat the lessons over a series of days; at least two weeks.


More than four years ago:

jeff_lindqvist wrote:
sfuqua wrote:I've always thought that Alexander Arguelles's approach to shadowing was very weird. He starts off blind shadowing for several days (I guess for pronunciation) and then shadows with the book to learn the meaning and does other things. I grew up as a graduate student in the age of Krashen, so meaning seems primary to me.


Here's what he wrote nearly ten years ago (Message 20 of 39):
Blind shadowing first and foremost when learning the phonetics of a language like Korean forces you listen more carefully and to reproduce the sounds you actually hear rather than attempting the approximate associations you will be given in any description of the sounds of the language.

When working through an Assimil or Linguaphone type method by shadowing, blind shadowing each lesson initially before listening to the text forces your mind to understand as much as it can on its own. You only need do this once or twice before looking at the text for clarification, but if you look at the text first and foremost, you will understand more when you listen/shadow, but you will not know how much you would have understood without doing this.
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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Fri Mar 18, 2022 12:58 pm

Yes, I've always thought that his approach was wrong. But what do I know? :lol:
I guess, I'm thinking more of Listening Reading when I do shadowing.
There's nothing wrong with going through the lesson without the book once or twice, but Dr. Arguelles has advocated:
Day Lessons
Day 1 Lesson 1 - Blind shadowing
Day 2 Lessons 1 and 2 - Blind shadowing
Day 3 Lessons 1, 2 and 3 - Blind shadowing
(continue adding one lesson daily...)
Day 6 Lessons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 - Blind shadowing
Day 7 Lessons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, - Blind shadowing
Day 8 Lessons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 - Blind shadowing
Day 9 Lesson 1 - Shadowing + reading English;
Day 9 cont. Lessons 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10 - Blind shadowing
Day 10 Lesson 1 - Shadowing + reading English;
Day 10 cont. Lessons 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11 - Blind shadowing
Day 11 Lesson 2 - Shadowing + reading English; Lesson 1 - Thumbs, L1 dominance
Day 11 cont. Lessons 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10, 11, and 12 - Blind shadowing


Where blind shadowing goes on for more than a week. This is what I was complaining about.
2 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
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Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Fri Mar 18, 2022 1:20 pm

Actually, I have always thought that Arguelles is absolutely brilliant. He has had a wonderful effect on the global language learning community. I think that I have probably payed attention to what he said one time, and not payed attention to the global context of what he was saying.

The single biggest thing I have learned during my last few years is the whole use of bilingual texts, both in Arguelles's shadowing method and in the closely related Listening-Reading technique. :D
3 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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luke
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby luke » Fri Mar 18, 2022 3:45 pm

sfuqua wrote:I have always thought that Arguelles is absolutely brilliant.
Day Lessons
Day 1 Lesson 1 - Blind shadowing
Day 11 cont. Lessons 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10, 11, and 12 - Blind shadowing


Where blind shadowing goes on for more than a week. This is what I was complaining about.

I share your appreciation for Professor Arguelles.

On this one point, we have different understandings of his "blind shadowing" protocol. You may be correctly interpreting him. But just for clarity and discussion - and sorry for doing this in your log - since we've started ...

My understanding of the bit I quoted was that only lesson 12 would be blind shadowed that day. I could be wrong, but I'm kind of fond of his videos and sometimes use them for ideas and even lullabies.

One of the things that makes this sort of discussion both interesting and imprecise is that Professor Arguelles ideas evolve over time AND we have to keep in mind who or what he's addressing at the time.

On that last bit, Professor Arguelles says very clearly that older Assimil methods were generally better, more complete, and carried a useful story (such as a foreigner going to visit the target country, which is a situation many language learners can imagine themselves in, so "relevant to the student").

However, in his recent demonstration videos such as "learn a language in 15 minutes a day", etc, he's showing recent Assimil courses. That's helpful for a couple reasons. They are more readily available. They are easier, and therefore less daunting to a new student, etc.

My point is, he doesn't pull out the hammer and say, "get the old Assimil course from the 70s, ...", in an attempt to make everything as "optimal" as it might could be.

I share your honest doubt about blindly doing something when helpful resources like the words in the book are at my fingertips. I'm not academic though, nor a researcher, nor a scientist, not even a polygot, lol: so take my perspective with a grain of salt. ;)

Hope today is good for you and your family. It's nice and rainy here today and it's Friday.
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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Mar 18, 2022 6:02 pm

sfuqua wrote:Where blind shadowing goes on for more than a week. This is what I was complaining about.


Ah, I see what you mean. When blind shadowing was mentioned back in the days, I don't think there was I had a strict study plan in mind - just a means to dip one's toes in the water. Later, he presented this day 1, day 2 approach, which of course may have its merits as well.
0 x
Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
Finnish with extra pain : 100 / 100

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sat Mar 19, 2022 12:17 am

I think that that day 1, day 2 stuff was just what he happened to be doing with the language he was working on at the time he mentioned the schedule.
When I shadowed Spanish with Ease years ago, I spent most of my time on the shadowing while looking at either the L2 or the L1. I also like to shadow while driving or while walking without looking at the book, once I have a firm grasp of the meaning of the passage...
No, I don't look at the books while drivning :lol:
3 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
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Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sat Mar 19, 2022 11:08 pm

RU
anki el nuevo ruso sin esfuerzo : 66 / 2670 2670 cards
GA
anki Irish : 50 / 23448 23448 cards

That's where I am in this process right now, just getting started. It seems to be getting a little easier today.
We'll see what tomorrow brings. :D
One of the things that is a little frustrating now is that I have to hold back right now to avoid building up unsustainable review cards later. I guess I can just shadow more.
Edited to better reflect what I did today.
4 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...


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