Acquiring Russian The Natural Way

Over the past couple of months I've been working through a deck of the 1000 most frequently used Russian words and today I 'finished'. By that I mean, I was shown my last set of new words. Of course I will continue to work to get more of those words into my long term memory. In a couple of weeks I might start adding back a couple of suspended cards per day but I'm conscious that there's a reason I struggled with those words in the first place and that they are probably better acquired within context. This Anki deck is very simple, the Russian word with audio on one side and the English translation on the other. No pictures, not context. The aim is recognition only (see the Russian word and know what it means) but not recall (see the English word and translate it to Russian). That is fine for this stage of acquiring vocabulary but in the long term I need to acquire words within the context of sentences, conversations and writing. Anki Stats New: 0 Young: 189 Mature: ...

My big passion in life is music so I'm interested to listen to Russian music and possibly use it as another way to learn the language.  I've found an artists called Hensy that had a big hit last year with the song  Поболело и прошло . I think it's a great tune and it's very similar to some of the music I've been working on myself.  I've been listening and singing along to this song  almost  every day over the past week and the words are starting to  stick  in my head. It's a simple song to play on the guitar so my aim is to be able to play it myself. I wonder how difficult it will be to play it (without reading the lyrics at the same time) as a language that I'm still learning? Do any of my readers have experience in learning songs in a different language?

My first attempts at learning another language were partly inspired by learning about various apps like Memrise, Duolingo and Anki. I was exposed Spaced Repetition Systems and how that could help me memorise vocabulary more easily. Ultimately they didn't help me to acquire any new language and I found the process dull and repetitive. When I made a new commitment to acquiring Russian in August 2020 I thought that some of those apps would play a part in the learning process, even if just as a fun distraction from the main activities. However in the first couple of weeks I realised that except for Anki (recognition only) those apps were useless to me. You could say using them is better than nothing but when I though about the opportunity cost of the time spent on them, time that is better spent on other activities, then it wasn't justifiable. And as I said I never really enjoyed those apps. The gamification elements are not in the least bit entertaining or motivating to me. (BTW I...

There are many different websites, YouTube channels, podcasts and FaceBook groups and pages about learning Russian but here's one that looks particularly interesting to me because it's all about Russian memes, jokes, idioms and everyday culture. They have quite detailed breakdowns of the language used. Absolute Russian

Something that I've heard Steve Kaufmann say repeatedly is that one of the most important skills when learning a language is your ability to notice. When you start noticing patterns you should investigate them and use them as an opportunity to learn. Well after 7 months of learning Russian I really started to notice the different cases for 'you': ты, тебя, тебе etc.  Don't get me wrong, it's not that this has been under my radar all this time. It's just that my curiosity has now become so intense that I'm actually willing to learn a little bit of grammar in order to understand it better. This is also the result of using the Speakly app which requires me to choose the correct word for some of the exercises. From some quick searches this is what I've determined to be a list of the various cases of 'you'. Please realise that I'm learning this for the first time and just going off of what I've found online. Don't take this as the definite...

February Statistics Passive watching and listening: 4:29 hours (Mostly listening) Active watching: 3:15 hours (Comprehensible input and shows) Vocabulary and Sentences: 9:02 hours (Anki) Reading with Audio: 10:36 hours (Glossika, 5522 reps, 314 sentences) Active Study: 6:52 hours (Mostly the app Speakly, 206 words) Total: 34:15 hours So in January, after 6 months of acquiring Russian, I experienced my first dip in motivation. I was not enjoying myself as much as I had been before and I think this was mostly because I had some other things going on in my life rather than anything specifically to do with this project. Despite my lack of motivation I did not miss a single day of Anki and Glossika revisions. Towards the end of the month I started to feel better and I anticipated thing would be different in February. Judging by the numbers alone things haven't really changed. But I am positive about my progress, and I'll discuss why later.  I did half as much passive listening and s...