M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6368 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 25 of 32 10 May 2013 at 11:57pm | IP Logged |
Team Tac 2013 - Team MIR - Log #4
M. Medialis Log - Russian Edition!
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Some Estonian friends (some who speak Russian but not English) are in my howntown right now, so I've just had a little chat with them in Russian!
I had prepared for this weekend by LRing a dramatized version of Oscar Wilde's "The importance of being Earnest" in Russian and listening to some podcasts. Suddenly, Russian feels like the most natural thing in my life again. -Really, Russian feels so natural and easy (compared to Japanese), that I sometimes wonder if I was born to study/speak Russian. ;)
The Fluency Illusion
Now the feeling of fluency is not completely accurate. I'll call it the Immersion Filter Box Illusion - I'm really good and fluent at the (few) things I know, but as soon as I hit some real reality I quickly realize how little I know.
I understand a large part of the conversations in an Oscar Wilde drama (and feel like the king of the world), and then when I speak I realize that I don't even know the Russian words for 'rain', 'orange' and the number six. Lol. :)
Russian basic fluency does seem totally within reach though (just give me a year or so)! I'm very tempted to take the next step soon and maybe get a private tutor. My plan is to make sure that I get the basics right when I take my first speaking steps so I don't reinforce my errors and get used to bad Russian. (I guess this is essentially the good old "speaking first vs understanding first" theme. And as a hardcore introvert I really prefer the latter! :).
Going Russian?
Anyway, I really had a great evening, and it was fun to have a real conversation in Russian again (my third time?). I'd love to go all in for Russian again and get some real-world practice (maybe travel somewhere?), let's see what happens! :)
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Team MIR - M. Medialis
Edited by M. Medialis on 10 May 2013 at 11:58pm
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M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6368 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 26 of 32 11 May 2013 at 4:44pm | IP Logged |
Team Tac 2013 - Team MIR - Log #5
Wow. I suddenly got a new burst of inspiration and decided that I should do something radical to get fluent in Russian! :D
Immersion in Saint Petersburg
I found a really cool two-week Russian intensive course in Saint Petersburg. I'd get 40 lessons with a private tutor and live with a Russian family.
This is just too good to be true, I'm so excited!! :D :D
I don't know when I'll be able to do this immersion trip since I have a full-time job. Maybe I'll even wait until January 2014. The cool thing is that I finally have something to look forward to again - how much can I learn before the immersion trip? :)
My hope is that the tutor can help me to erase all the non-Russianness from my speech. It would be so cool to finally upgrade myself from Diglot to Triglot!
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Team MIR - M. Medialis
Edited by M. Medialis on 11 May 2013 at 4:44pm
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Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5567 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona
| Message 27 of 32 11 May 2013 at 8:59pm | IP Logged |
With all the LR you've done over the years, I'm sure living with a Russian family for 2 weeks in Saint Petersburg whilst also studying intensively with a tutor would really boost your conversation skills and help activate fathoms of passive vocabulary. This sounds like a great idea if you can book some time off work! Just drop me a PM later, and I'll give you some tips where to go during your stay (my wife's from SPb). :)
One of the things I find very useful these days is to focus more on colloquial dialogue in contemporary Russian movies and series. They expose the learner to a radically different set of vocabulary and collocations when placed side-by-wide with 19th century literature, and are much closer to what's needed for everyday conversational speech.
Of course, it still takes time for мой маленький мозг to try and rearrange it all in real-time, but I'm hoping that through more and more exposure, and short but intensive bouts of study, this process will become more automatic and eventually speed up.
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M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6368 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 28 of 32 17 May 2013 at 11:04pm | IP Logged |
Team Tac 2013 - Team MIR - Log #6
@Teango: Hey, thanks for the tips! When I read it I instantly realized that I have drifted away completely from contemporary Russian. Finding modern sources of dialogue is really a top priority! :) I'm really eager to find good Russian movies and tv-series to watch.
I'll pm you later! :D
Preparations for going Russian
Right now I'm creating a language learning environment in my home. I have just re-installed my computer and made all my language learning tools easier to reach. I have also ordered two Russian books for LR: Children of the Arbat, and Moscow 2042. Both have excellent Russian audiobooks so I look forward to diving into 36 hours of exciting LR! :D
As soon as the language is activated again, I'll restart my old ambitious grammar project and also maybe do some quick word list exercises in order to get the spelling and definitions down of common words that I already "know".
What about Japanese?
I don't want to lose Japanese during this Russian run. But I'm not sure how. How do you keep two languages boiling at the same time?
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Team MIR - M. Medialis
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M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6368 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 29 of 32 19 May 2013 at 11:52am | IP Logged |
Team Tac 2013 - Team MIR - Log #7
So, now I'm waiting for my Russian LR material to arrive. Meanwhile, I'm trying to activate Japanese as much as I can.
Studying two languages
I still often find it difficult to study two languages at the same time. The problem is not that I confuse them though. The problem is that my mind gets completely soaked by one of the languages, and it feels so good that it's almost impossible to switch to another! :D
By the way - when my mind is soaked like that (happens easily when I do LR nowadays), learning becomes so much faster and so much more enjoyable. The key is to keep both languages boiling at the same time - somehow.
Japanese Project
Now, I have just begun experimenting with a "press pause"-anime learning project where I repeatedly rewind the video in order to catch everything (interesting) they say. Even though I may understand a sentence, many details tend to get filtered away. I.e. "did he use the particle は or が?", and "did he insert a little 事は in the sentence?".
I hope this way of studying will improve my speaking quality in the long run. At least I think it's fun! :)
I also continue doing scriptorium from Visual Novels and looking up as many words as I can.
Next Week
Soon, I'll unleash the Russian LR flood!! Will I be able to keep both languages active? :)
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Team MIR - M. Medialis
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M. Medialis Diglot TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Sweden Joined 6368 days ago 397 posts - 508 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Russian, Japanese, French
| Message 30 of 32 21 May 2013 at 11:26pm | IP Logged |
Team Tac 2013 - Team MIR - Log #8
I have just loaded my cannons with three barrels of gunpowder and 47 hours of exciting LR (great literature+great audiobooks).
Everything is ready. It is time to commence the glorious:
Journey to Петербург.
Hour Count: 0
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Team MIR - M. Medialis
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Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5146 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian*
| Message 31 of 32 19 September 2016 at 3:58pm | IP Logged |
M. Medialis wrote:
Japanese Project
Now, I have just begun experimenting with a "press pause"-anime learning project where I repeatedly rewind the video in order to catch everything (interesting) they say. Even though I may understand a sentence, many details tend to get filtered away. I.e. "did he use the particle は or が?", and "did he insert a little 事は in the sentence?". |
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It does sound fun, but I am curious how much time do you need to finish an anime this way?
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mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5237 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese
| Message 32 of 32 27 September 2016 at 12:18am | IP Logged |
Monox D. I-Fly wrote:
It does sound fun, but I am curious how much time do you need to finish an anime this way? |
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Not a direct answer, but doing a similar thing with video, subtitles and transcripts can take me anywhere from 0 extra time to around 2x the original runtime (i.e. a 20 min episode of a random series will typically take me between 20 and 40 minutes to 'process'.). My B2 students usually do the same thing in around 5x the original runtime, because of the sh*tload of stuff they usually need to look up, etc.
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