Acquiring Russian The Natural Way

November Statistics Passive watching and listening: 58:58 hours (Mostly listening) Active watching: 3:07 hours (Mostly comprehensible input) Pronunciation, Vocabulary and Sentences: 8:01 hours (Anki) Reading with audio: 0:30 minutes (Dialogue) Total: 70:36 hours November was another lockdown month here in London which meant I was able to spend more time on my  Russian acquisition mission. As I mentioned in previous posts I reassessed how I was spending my time  half way through the month. I stopped using the Fluent Forever Pronunciation Trainer  because I had reached the point of diminishing returns and I refocused my attention on increasing my passive vocabulary. Although I said I would spend more time on Fluent Forever's  The Most Awesome Word List You Have Ever Seen , that didn't end up happening.  Instead I spent roughly 10 minutes a day on Xefjord's  200 words and phrases  and 10 minutes on a frequency deck of the 1000 most used Russian words...

Last week I wrote about reassessing my approach to language learning and how I realised that I was spending time on output without realising it. In effect I had strayed away from a strict input first / mass immersion approach. Since that post I no longer practice producing Russian when prompted by English. So when I'm working through Xefjord's Anki deck for example, I suspend the English to Russian cards. I'm aiming to understand spoken Russian only, not speak it. I've also found a set of frequency decks from 1000 to 10,000 words . These decks are for recognition of Russian only. My work with the first deck has somewhat overtaken my efforts with the 625 words although it is not my intention to stop with that book.  The types of words that I'm learning with the frequency deck are especially useful because it contains a lot of conjunctions, words such as 'and', 'or', 'but', 'so','for' etc. These contain a lot of meaning and allo...

 This video was in my YouTube feed and in my opinion it's a much clearer explanation of the difference between Ш and Щ. I'm saving it here in case anyone needs help with it.

This week I've finished studying the Fluent Forever Pronunciation Trainer and I've also finished watching all the of the  Zero Beginners Comprehensible Russian  videos at least once (many several times). Other than that my activities include passively listening to  Dungeons & Dragons streams , memorising vocabulary using  The Fluent Forever 625 important words  and Xefjord's Basic Word and Phrases Deck  as well as a little bit of reading of real dialogue subtitles on YouTube. BTW, if you want to see a detailed breakdown of exactly what I've been spending my time on then have a look here:  Google Doc: Russian Study Log This week I found Matt vs Japan's new website  Refold.la  which has a roadmap detailing his method. In case you don't know Matt has attained a near native level of Japanese by basically combining mass immersion of input with vocabulary and phrase training (for recognition purposes) using Anki.  While it's not my aim t...

On the 23rd of September I started using the Anki Deck:  Fluent Forever Pronunciation Trainer  and I've spent almost exactly 9 hours studying with it. On average 10 minutes a day, occasionally up to 15 or 20 minutes if I missed a session. Over the past couple of weeks the average time has come down to 3 to 10 minutes and I haven't noticed any new cards come up for a while. At this point the hardest cards are those that ask me to spell words after hearing them, but writing isn't something I'm particularly interested in right now. Generally I am pretty good with spelling what I hear but as an example I still struggle to hear and to place soft signs ( Ь ) if they appear the middle of words. All in all I feel that there's little benefit to continuing considering my focus right now is on listening and understanding spoken Russian. If someone had absolutely no experience with Russian then I would recommend this training deck. You'll learn the Russian script and your f...

I've said before that I've been in two minds about reading Russian. People like Steve Kaufmann advocate reading as soon as possible and while he is able to acquire languages quite quickly, his accents in each one are usually not that great. Other people say that you shouldn't start reading until you've been listening for hundreds or even thousands of hours. For me the most important aspect in all my endeavours is that I need to be able to do it sustainably over the long term. Whether it's exercise, a hobby or a business idea I always think about how I can incorporate it into my life in such a way that I will put in consistent effort, week after week, month after month. After just over two months I can definitely say that the current approach is more enjoyable and more sustainable than my previous attempts (Michel Thomas, Duolingo, Memrise).  But I do want to give myself some variety to keep things interesting so I've decided that a good middle ground is to read ...

This is the first month where I was somewhat back into a normal routine with my work and social life. So the time that I was spending on acquiring Russian in the last 30 days might be indicative of what I can sustain in the long term, at least over the winter months. August Passive watching and listening: 31:28 hours Active watching: 2:32 hours Vocabulary: 1:38 hours Total: 35:38 hours September Passive watching and listening: 11:27 hours Active watching: 1:14 hours Vocabulary: 3:56 hours Total: 16:37 hours October Passive watching and listening: 35:53 hours Active watching: 1:47  hours Pronunciation, Vocabulary and Sentences: 8:03 hours Reading with audio: 7:29 minutes Total: 42:51 hours You can find my study log here:  Google Doc: Russian Study Log September was a transition month for me but I've settled back into a new routine. I increased my passive listening time since I can do that while working. On average I listen to an hour of Russian a day but in reality I'm listenin...