Acquiring Russian The Natural Way

A lot less Russian than I would like. I'm still motivated to learn. Last night I had a short conversation with a Russian couple and they took me seriously as a learner. However it's now been more than a year of very limited studying, due to instability and a lack of routine in my life. I'm doing my best to get back on track. I've been focusing on useful phrases using Taalhammer . It's a shame because I was doing so well and I can have short fun interactions in the language. I'm very busy with a ton of things at the moment so that's all I have for today. May will be very similar but I'm going to do my best to turn things around this summer. April 2025 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 3:13 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 hours Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 hours Reading with Audio: 2:46 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:00 hours Active Study: 0:00 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice (LinguaTal...

  I'm very motivated at the moment, while my average time is not very high a good proportion of my activity was dedicated to impactful activities. As I mentioned in previous posts I'm dedicating more time to memorising useful phrases for everyday conversations (which is my primary goal at the moment). I'm also experimenting with a new AI tool: LanguaTalk  which I'm very impressed with so far. I will do a review of it soon. January 2025 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 8:04 hours Active watching or listening: 0:09 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 1:42 minutes Reading with Audio: 05:42 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:27 hours Active Study: 6:22 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice (LinguaTalk): 0:15 minutes Games: 0:00 Total: 22:40 hours Daily Average: 0:44 hours

I've 'learned' another 200 words (or more accurately  lemmas ) with Speakly over the past couple of months. 'Learned' is a broad category ranging from 'I can use this in conversation' to 'I might recognise it in certain contexts'.  I've been more consistent with Speakly since the start of the new year and overall enjoying what it provides in my Russian acquisition journey.  I have mentioned before that I'm learning some of the words more easily than others because I have encountered them in other situations. That could be in other apps like Glossika, from importing the Speakly monologues into LingQ or perhaps when reading memes. This means that some days I 'learn' three new words easily, other times I can struggle for a week to get a word into my memory (an even then I will only recognise it in a particular context). I'm not sure what proportion of the words are somewhat familiar to me and how many are completely new. Before it fe...

Attempting conversations in Russian sheds lights on the areas where my knowledge and abilities are lacking. While speaking I'll realise that there are particular words and phrases that I don't yet know or topics where I could do with a larger vocabulary. I've come to the conclusion that I should be more proactive in filling in those gaps of my knowledge. To do that I need memorise words, phrases and sentences so that I can use them immediately. I've been collecting useful phrases and sentences for a while but I need to be more deliberate in my memorisation efforts. The most effective memorisation technique is 'active recall', basically testing yourself. See this short video explaining the process.  Now with SRS software like Anki you can automate the process of making sure you are prompted to remember information at the correct time (just as you are about to forget it). But I'm not entirely sure how that applies in this scenario. Someone in in the comments ...

Just a quick note on success story. I had a short conversation with a Russian person and they complimented my pronunciation and seemed impressed by my ability. Just celebrating the small wins.

I'm mostly back on track with my Russian acquisition journey. It's been a strange year with inconsistent study. On a positive note I've had some good interactions with native Russian speakers which is very motivating. I want to push hard this year in order to get to a comfortable conversational level. December 2024 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 18:37 hours Active watching or listening: 0:11 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 minutes Reading with Audio: 04:29 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:00 hours Active Study: 4:45 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice: 0:00 minutes Games: 0:00 Total: 28:02 hours Daily Average: 0:56 hours November 2024 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 18:27 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 minutes Reading with Audio: 12:52 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:15 hours Active Study: 0:00 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Fre...