A language learners’ forum

Wow! Here I was a little apprehensive about having enough Free and Legal resources. I will look through them all. Thanks MamPata.

Question for the board.

I have this idea for my initial level of vocabulary acquisition. Ideally I would like to try to eliminate all English interactions with say my first 2500 words in Russian. If you were to do it, how would you?

My idea is to take a word frequency list and google image them and somehow marry the two together. Basically an Anki Deck but without any English. Also ideally the words having audio by a native speaker would be ideal. Thoughts ?

I feel like I spent way too much time in Spanish translating and would like to avoid this from the beginning if possible.

Thx

Interesting! I've never thought about doing that, so I don't really have any advice. That seems possible, but I suspect you will struggle with some words. I'll be intrigued to hear how it goes!

There is a Русский язык по методу Натура (Russian according to the Nature method) but I haven't seen it, nor used any other Nature method (nowadays, it seems to be slightly more common for Latin learners).

Russian through Reading is another one.

Neither gives you an Anki deck, though, and especially not one with audio. But there are other ways to learn vocabulary than through Anki. If you can stand some English, you can use Ilya Frank's material.

Welcome BOLIO! Learn Russian RT & native materials are good choices. The other resources I don't know, but have fun! Russian is challenging but rewarding. Stay relaxed and enjoy the ride!

I'm having a little bit of trouble with the course I'm currently using. Does anyone have used the Penguin's Russian Course?

I know a lot of people recommend it, and I have a copy. But I didn't really use it, I went with Learn Russian RT in combination with "Russian Grammar You Really Need To Know". At least in the earlier stages of my studying. Also having a teacher can be helpful if you can't get your head around something. I can also recommend "Schaum's Outline of Russian Grammar".

BOLIO wrote:Question for the board.

I have this idea for my initial level of vocabulary acquisition. Ideally I would like to try to eliminate all English interactions with say my first 2500 words in Russian. If you were to do it, how would you?

My idea is to take a word frequency list and google image them and somehow marry the two together. Basically an Anki Deck but without any English. Also ideally the words having audio by a native speaker would be ideal. Thoughts ?

I feel like I spent way too much time in Spanish translating and would like to avoid this from the beginning if possible.

Thx

I can tell you how I did it. I started with the basics through various resources. Work on your pronunciation and basic familiarity with the language. Once you have a nice base, start doing flashcards using audio from forvo. Make sure you answer out loud. I would shy away from using a frequency list. Take words and sentence from the materials you are using. Once you've got a small vocabulary, I don't know, say 100 words with a couple of verbs and phrases. Start taking Russian lessons and start talking. Note down all the words you didn't know and things you couldn't express, a good teacher should help with this. Create flashcards from these, and start build with the things you need and want to say rather than a dry and impersonal list. Start using LingQ to read and listen to basic texts, this will start giving you a feel for how the language is used, and improve your listening comprehension.

No guarantee that's the best way or the right way for you. But that's roughly how I approached it.

BooBoo wrote:I'm having a little bit of trouble with the course I'm currently using. Does anyone have used the Penguin's Russian Course?

I did and really liked it (but it was not the first course I used and I had other resources). What's the issue?

Beginners can consider Amazing Russian on YouTube whose lessons are really well explained, imho.