A Couple of Obervations

I'm watching one of Inna's comprehensible Russian videos and had a couple of thoughts that I want to share.

1. Working my way through the 1000 most common words Anki deck is really useful. I sometimes hear words that I would never be able to pick up through context alone and it really aids my understanding of the content. I'd say on average I know the meaning of the 'new' word 50% of the time, the other 50% I recognise it and have to remind myself of its meaning with the Google translate app. Most of the time it helps me to find the meaning but occasionally I can't seem to pronounce it correctly or get translations that I don't recognise. I don't worry about it and just move on.

2. Occasionally I'm still trying to mentally translate words from Russian to English as I hear them. It's partly to confirm to myself that I know the meaning of each word and partly to more accurately understand the meaning of utterances and sentences. While this might feel like a productive thing to do in the short term, I believe it will slow me down in the long run. I'll do my best to stop doing it.

3. Related to the previous point, I believe I have to remember that following the Mass Immersion Approach / Comprehensible Input method requires a tolerance of ambiguity. Right now I'm at the stage where it's ok to not be sure if for example Inna says "he watched", "he saw" or "he viewed". The important thing is that I understand that a man perceived information using his eyes.

My understanding of language acquisition at the moment is that it's about mapping the new language directly on to my thoughts or "mentalese" as Matt would describe it. And this isn't something that happens perfectly right from the start. I'm building up connections and associations that will become more defined over time. Right now in my mind there is the concept of using your eyes to take in information. In English I have several words associated with that: "seeing", "watching", "looking", "noticing", "viewing" etc. I'm starting to recognise Russian words that have those meanings but the 1 to 1 mapping of each word isn't there yet. And that's ok, that will come with time. At least, that's what I think will happen.

What do you think? Are you experiencing something similar?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How I Use Anki

Writing about my experience with Memrise and Duolingo compared with Anki made me think about the different ways I use them. As I mentioned before my recall of words learned with the first two apps is mostly confined to when I'm actually using the app. Because of this I keep changing my mind as to whether they are at all useful. But the words I'm learning with Anki are easier for me to recall in real life away from my phone or computer. Now my Anki deck is very simple, I have not added any images or mnemonics. But it's important to know that I'm using Anki in combination with the book of 625 words.  And I'm only adding them page by page as I work through the book. Currently I'm on page 8 covering 48 words. Every day I look at the images that I'm working on and recall the relevant words. And every couple of days I add a new image. As well as that I bring to mind real memories, feelings and thoughts when I'm reviewing and recalling. For example I think of t...
Read more

3 year overview of my Russian acquisition journey

Image
For anyone interested here's an overview of my Russian acquisition journey over the past 3 years (I started in August 2020). Click on any of the charts to get a closer look. I think this data is 98% accurate. However as time goes on I'm starting to encounter more and more Russian in day to day life which I don't count. For example, reading memes, seeing what friends post on social media, writing messages, meeting Russian speakers in real life. In all my activities I try to focus on material that is of practical use. So I don't read fantasy books like Harry Potter or watch media like Anime. I very rarely watch series or shows but when I do it's usually contemporary drama. In the 5% of time that I'm not reading or listening to material from Speakly I will watch street interviews or dialogues aimed at beginners (Easy Russian, Russian With Max). Activity Overview Passive Immersion : Listening to audio in the background while I do other things (work, cleaning, walkin...
Read more

Russian Listening Comprehension: A character description

While listening to a Dungeons & Dragons stream I experienced my best moment of understanding real spoken Russian.  The game master was describing a magician who was wearing a tall turban made out of some notable material. His magic was derived from astronomical knowledge involving the sun and stars.  It was just two or three sentences but my comprehension was high with almost no translating happening in my mind. I heard the words and I saw the image in my mind. I understood some words like   тюрбан , because they are similar to English. Others were words that I acquired from the 625 words list or from watching comprehensible input videos.
Read more