Russian Study Group

[blaurebell]

Well, I've certainly been there Fortheo! My first attempt with Russian kind of looked like yours only that I decided to do a 3 month challenge. I started off with a German base Russian course that threw so much vocabulary at me that I was groaning from all the anki reps. And since German has cases, they must have thought, oh that's all easy for Germans then, let's just throw 3 or 4 grammar concepts in there all at once. It was exasperating! Even worse, they designed the exercises in such a stupid way that you had to understand *all* the new grammar concepts before you could do the exercises. It felt about as comfortable as being buried under a landslide. So, after a few units I decided that it ain't going to work for me and looked at Russian reddit. There I found a few more courses, one of which was the Penguin Russian course and the other Russian World on Youtube. I looked at the Penguin course and realised that although it looked very very good it doesn't have audio and that would totally kill me - at that point I couldn't even distinguish ш, щ and ч yet. So, I went with Russian World which is based on a traditional grammar heavy book called Russian for Everybody. Russian World was designed for American high school students, so there was no chance in hell that it would leave me behind, it was super slow. And with that I kinda found my way in, learned the alphabet properly, learned the conjugations and some basic vocabulary. I also used anki with frequency lists to learn some core vocabulary. Then the Duolingo course appeared and I did maybe a third of it before my 3months were over. At the end of it I picked up a relatively simple book and tried to read it: a re-narration of the Wizard of Oz. None of the vocabulary I learned was of any use and even with a dictionary I couldn't figure out half the sentences, because they were way too long, the word order was too confusing and I hadn't seen half the grammar in there! Total failure! I then calculated how long it would take me to get through the Russian for Everybody course at my pace, which would surely be enough to start reading. Well, another year! Another year with silly teaching texts about a family with the most boring life. Another year of awful grammar drilling without any visible progress. And that's when I gave up.

My second attempt was much more successful: I did the Duolingo and Assimil course both at the same time at the beginning for the first 2 months. I got about halfway through Assimil before I abandoned it and I finished the Duolingo course, which I started from scratch again. Turns out that without knowing it I was actually very very close the last time round because it only takes about half the Duolingo course to see most of the grammar that you need to start reading! I got through it in 2 months at 100 XP a day with at least 5 new lessons a day. From the last checkpoint onwards I didn't do any strengthening, because those were mostly vocabulary lessons and pretty useless in general. I also started reading graded readers with LWT after just a few days and began with my first proper novel - a translation from English - after 3 weeks. At that point I had already seen half of Duolingo / most of the grammar. And since parsing Russian sentences is tough I also did Clozemaster for a couple of months until I got more used to reading. That helped a lot, I can only recommend it!

The problem with my first attempt was also that I had picked a re-narration as my first book and not a proper translation. In translations the sentences tend to be at least a little closer to English and there is usually only 1 sentence a page that is difficult to parse, instead of 5+ in native Russian content. This way you can get used to the difficult Russian word order and all the long sentences a bit more slowly. Also, I wasted a lot of time with my traditional courses. If you go through those kinds of courses, they want you to be able to produce the grammar as well, but you don't need to be able to produce for reading! If you want to read first, then don't drill grammar, it's a waste of time. With Russian it's particularly frustrating to drill because there is so much grammar and it's tough when you're not yet used to the structure of the language. Drilling grammar after having seen a lot of native content is much easier, so it's more efficient to leave the production side for later.

The other mistake I made was to waste a lot of time trying to build a core vocabulary without knowing which kind of vocabulary I actually needed. There is so much vocabulary to learn in Russian that most of what you might learn in the hopes that it will be useful, will likely be irrelevant for the first novel you try to read. For fantasy novels your core vocabulary might include weird words like magic wand or sword, words that won't appear in frequency lists. And you simply don't need to know infrequent words that often appear in courses - names of animals for example. Basically it's not very predictable what you will need until you pick a book. And you also don't need to know every word in the book well, some might only appear once, so putting all words in the book into anki would be a huge waste of time. Counterintuitively this actually makes things a lot easier though! You can simply ignore all the vocabulary you see in courses altogether and concentrate only on the grammar. Don't even try to remember the vocabulary, it's likely that you won't need it. And if you do, it will be repeated so many times in your first book that you'll remember it without any effort.

So my advice would be: Don't try to produce correct Russian grammar, focus on trying to understand first. No drills beyond Duolingo - most of them are L2->L1, and you can fail most of the L1-L2 drills and still progress in the course. Also, ignore vocabulary. You will learn it while reading. Focus on understanding the grammar only. That makes Assimil more doable I think. I personally like Assimil, but I need to shadow the audio for it to really sink in, which makes it a little more time-consuming. In 2months I got through half the passive wave and all of Duolingo. Maybe Duolingo would have been difficult without Assimil and the other way round, it helped to do them together, because they introduce structures in a different order. In any case, once I started reading, Assimil quickly got easier too because of all the real sentences I saw in context. Eventually I also reached a point where reading taught me more than Assimil - the sentences tend to be much more complex - and that's when I abandoned Assimil. By chance this was also when I finished Duolingo.

Now, time is a problem with Russian. It took me 113h to get through my first 250 page novel in LWT. At half an hour a day that would take more than half a year. Also Duolingo, Assimil and Clozemaster took me about 80h even after all the more traditional grammar drilling. Russian simply takes a lot of time. For my first 5000 pages I'm estimating around 600h, probably a little more. Even at 2h a day that's almost a year! And one thing is also for sure: Reading with LWT in Russian is straining and indeed a Herculean effort, at least until you reach ~15% unknown words on average and I got to that average only after more than 400 pages. LingQ is less straining, because you don't need to type so much, but you won't pick up vocabulary as efficiently and you will have to read more to learn the same amount of vocabulary. I'm interested in quickly building enough vocabulary to watch TV shows and movies, and understand my relatives, so I prefer LWT. If that wasn't a priority, I'd definitely use LingQ, because LWT is actually a little too much torture with Russian. Also, don't make the mistake of reading only silently. Russian stress is unpredictable, so you should listen to every new word. Pick a translation for your first book and ideally one where you can find an audiobook. Otherwise Text to Speech might be useful too, as long as you never repeat anything it says. The writing style also matters in the beginning and I definitely found Harry Potter a lot less erratic than the fantasy series I picked for Russian, because in HP they stay in one spot a lot and things don't change too quickly. It reduced the amount of dense descriptions.

In any case, I think we've all been frustrated with Russian at some point. I bet that most of us have changed courses and methods a lot, because we got stuck somewhere. It's normal with a language like Russian. The important thing with a language like that is to know your goals and shape your learning journey accordingly. In Russian it generally goes like this: If you want to speak relatively quickly, drill grammar with traditional courses and leave reading for later, since it's very time consuming to learn all that literary vocabulary that you probably won't need for speaking at all. This is the traditional method of learning Russian, production first, reading and listening comprehension later, and most courses work like that. If you want to read, that strategy will get you exactly nowhere and it will all seem like a hamster wheel. More receptive courses like Duolingo or Assimil are the way to go in that case, combined with reading, reading and more reading of course.

[Fortheo]

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So my advice would be: Don't try to produce correct Russian grammar, focus on trying to understand first. No drills beyond Duolingo - most of them are L2->L1, and you can fail most of the L1-L2 drills and still progress in the course. Also, ignore vocabulary. You will learn it while reading. Focus on understanding the grammar only. That makes Assimil more doable I think. I personally like Assimil, but I need to shadow the audio for it to really sink in, which makes it a little more time-consuming. In 2months I got through half the passive wave and all of Duolingo. Maybe Duolingo would have been difficult without Assimil and the other way round, it helped to do them together, because they introduce structures in a different order. In any case, once I started reading, Assimil quickly got easier too because of all the real sentences I saw in context. Eventually I also reached a point where reading taught me more than Assimil - the sentences tend to be much more complex - and that's when I abandoned Assimil. By chance this was also when I finished Duolingo.

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I like this idea of Duolingo+ Assimil, but for whatever reason I was having a really difficult time with Duolingo's grammar explanations, which is what lead me to Hugo's because those courses have always meshed well with me. Then, of course I hit a wall in Hugo's lol, which sent me running back to Duolingo-- rinse wash and repeat. Between the two grammar heavy courses, I am learning, it's just frustratingly slow when I need to bounce back and forth to find an explanation that clicks with me

Oh well, I knew it wasn't going to be easy. I just gotta get past the obstacles!

[MamaPata]

How is everyone doing? What have you been up to in terms of Russian study? I've started watching Once Upon a Time in Russian (decent Russian dubbing! It's so exciting!). I've been sliding in terms of actual study, but this is really useful for me and I am coming across words I learn on memrise in context, which is always good.

[blaurebell]

I've been slacking off a few days, because I simply got bored with too much reading and I've been playing addictive games in Spanish. I tried playing one in Russian, but the Russian subs were flying past so quickly that I didn't have time to look anything up. I did get the gist though and could have theoretically played it missing half the story of the game. The story is a huge part of the enjoyment of the game though, so I better leave that one for later! At least some progress though, a few months ago I wouldn't have even known what the characters want from me! In any case, for me there are only few enjoyable activities in Russian so far and taking a break was necessary to make sure it stays enjoyable! I will start the reading up again when the 6WC starts in a couple of days.

[Xmmm]

How is everyone doing? What have you been up to in terms of Russian study? I've started watching Once Upon a Time in Russian (decent Russian dubbing! It's so exciting!). I've been sliding in terms of actual study, but this is really useful for me and I am coming across words I learn on memrise in context, which is always good.

I've been watching the Sniffer (season two now) and going through the transcripts. In a typical episode there might be only 100 "new", never before seen words (and a transcript is typically 3000 words) ... so that's good. Doesn't mean I understand everything when I hear it, so that's still bad.

I went back to reading also ... a book by the Strugatsky brothers. It's very heavy on description. Everything is slimy, dreary, sandy, smoky, etc. In a typical chapter 18% of the words are brand new, "blue" words ... but every page is a solid wall of blue and yellow words. It's like I don't know any Russian at all ...

[blaurebell]

That's what my fantasy series is like too Xmmm. It's one of these road trip in fantasy land type things, so there are landscape descriptions everywhere. If it was just a whole lot of dialogue it would be very breezy, but all those descriptions are always 18-22% new words *sigh*.

[Arnaud]

It's like I don't know any Russian at all ...

It could be my signature...

[Ogrim]

You all seem to be watching a lot of series in Russian. I am sure that is useful and I probably should try it as well, but the problem is that I don't have the patience for TV series, even in languages I understand well, so I just can't get myself around to start a series in Russian. Instead I watch short video clips on Youtube (e.g. the sketches by Уральские Пельмени) or news on Первый канал.

Currently I am struggling my way through the novel Евангелие от Соловьёва by Russian journalist and TV star Владимир Соловьёв. It is an intriguing book. Mr. Soloviev writes in first person as if the story really happened to him. In the book he meets a man called Daniil whom he believes to be Christ reincarnate. Together with Bill Gates (!) Soloviev sets about trying to convince world leaders that this is so, and they meet with the Pope and Soloviev is recieved in Kreml by President Putin. That is how far I've got. It is slow reading because Soloviev uses very elaborate vocabulary and I have to look up words frequently to be able to follow the story. I am about halfway through the book, and I am getting used to his style now, so hopefully I will be able to finish it during my next summer holidays in August.

I do need to review some grammar, but my main issue now is enhancing and retaining vocabulary. It is frustrating not to be able to read a page of Russian on my Kindle without having to turn to the pop-up dictionary every second minute or so.

[aaleks]

There's a Russian site that similar, to some extent, to goodreads.com. Honestly I don't know what that extent is, since I've never posted anything on either of the sites and don't know them well enough. Anyway they both are sites where people post their comments about books. There was a time when I actually read the comments on the site to choose what to read in... English . It was just easy for me to read in Russian back then.
This is the link https://www.livelib.ru/
And this is a direct link to the reviews page https://www.livelib.ru/reviews

[Ogrim]

Thank you aaleks for the link. I've had a look and it seems to be similar to Goodreads yes. I also discovered that it exists as an app for iPad. I will certainly use this site to get tips about Russian books to read, one day I may even be tempted to sign up .