How I Watch Comprehensible Russian Videos

The YouTube channel that really made me excited about the comprehensible input method is Comprehensible Russian, in particular the Zero Beginners Playlist. I find these videos short enough that I can give them my full attention and concentration without getting tired.

Every couple of days I go back and rewatch lessons and because they are short I can rewatch several at a time without getting tired. When watching the lessons I'm not concerned with understanding every single word. Rather I focus on following the message. The first time I watch a lesson my understanding is usually very basic. But every time I rewatch it my understanding becomes more nuanced and I start to understand one or two new words.

I do my best to try to connect the language directly to thoughts, memories, concepts and feelings. It's tempting to do mental translations for everything but I believe that will slow me down in the long run. Of course I can't help but automatically translate some words or phrases but as I said I try to connect the language to my mental experience as best I can with a minimum of mental translation.

Yesterday I mentioned that I thought about creating a new Anki deck for the 625 words, with just the images. I did that this morning and I will see report on how that works for me.

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