Acquiring Russian The Natural Way

I've been attending a Russian language group in my city over the past few weeks. It attracts a mixture of learners and speakers and it's a great environment to practice my listening and speaking skills. Usually there are 15 to 20 people attending and people naturally split into small group of 3 to 5 people. There's no set agenda, people just talk about what interests them. The most recent meeting lasted about 3 and a half hours and I was immersed in Russian 90% of the time. I'm listening a lot more than I'm speaking and I sometimes need to ask for a translation to English to make sure I'm still following the conversation. But I feel comfortable with ambiguity, and usually have a good understanding of what each person is saying. Examples of topics discussed include where to find particular types of restaurants in the city, politics and culture in various countries, work and hobbies. It's very motivating to be able to take part in a conversation, even with my

A great article with lots of advice about language learning. It closely matches my personal experience so far which will help to keep me motivated to continue with the way that I'm learning Russian. The main points that are covered in the article. So, here are the most important lessons I've learned: Think in ideas, not words  "A mediocre workout done religiously outperforms a perfect workout never done" Going abroad is a force multiplier: if you're not making progress at home, you won't magically begin improving just because you uproot your life You'll overestimate how much you need to know to begin doing cool things in a language and underestimate the gap between that point and fluency You will learn as well as you need to learn to do what your lifestyle demands of you, no better or worse; if you’re stuck, light a fire somewhere  Achieving fluency means you know one more language; you'll be the same person you are now, for better and worse, plus one

  In my last report I wrote about how I had a big drop in my average study time due to various life circumstances. Half-way through August I started rededicating myself to this acquisition journey. There's nothing much to say other than that I've regained my motivation and I'm get back on track.  August 2024 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 7:07 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 minutes Reading with Audio: 3:00 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:00 hours Active Study: 1:32 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice: 2:00 minutes Games: 0:00 Total: 13:40 hours Daily Average: 0:26 hours July 2024 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 3:10 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 minutes Reading with Audio: 0:27 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:00 hours Active Study: 1:20 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation

I started listening to native Russian content right from the start of this language acquisition project. Specifically videos of people playing Dungeons & Dragons on YouTube like this one  Форт Рузда | Вечерние Кости | ЭНОА | Глава 1 .  This is before I discovered Glossika and Speakly and I wanted to expose myself to Russian in order to get used to how it's spoken. The tones, the rhythms, where the gaps are between words etc. It seemed like a natural bottle neck for being able to have conversations in Russian, and being able to speak in the language has always been my number one goal. Sometimes I wonder if all that listening was not an efficient use of time. But I didn't know about those other resources yet, so I was doing the best I could. On Reddit I saw a thread where people talk about what they would have done differently to learn their target language. A lot of people are mentioning that they should have started listening more sooner. It seems that many people place a l

I recently attended another gathering of Russian speakers (native and learners). This time I found myself in a group of more advanced learners (3 others) and was part of a conversation that lasted somewhere between an hour and an hour and 30 minutes.  The conversation touched on why we are learning Russian, the Russian higher education system, central Asian restaurants in our city and several other topics. I was definitely the least skilled speaker in the group and spent a lot more time listening than speaking. But I had a great time. It's very interesting how a real life conversation provides so much more context compared to a podcast or even a lesson with a teacher.  My understanding of the conversation ebbed and flowed. Sometimes I understood everything, sometimes only the general topic. I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the conversation between the other three too often but occasionally I would ask about a specific word or would ask for a quick run down in English. The

In my previous post I mentioned how this year I've not been studying Russian as much as previously was the case. For the first couple of years I was averaging about an hour of exposure to the language per day. But so far this year it's probably not even 15 minutes per day, even counting the memes I see on Instagram. The reason for this laps is due to a change in personal circumstances which interrupted my study habits.  But I have to be honest that I'm often skipping opportunities to use an app or listen to Russian monologues such as when I'm commuting or in the gym. Those are relatively low-effort activities that I could be doing in what is otherwise 'down-time'. In July I visited the Baltic again but didn't have as many opportunities to speak Russian as in the past which was disappointing. But it made me realise how motivated I still am to actually speak with people. After all, that's my primary motivation. So when I got back home I decided to attend a