Acquiring Russian The Natural Way

A couple of weeks ago I started taking Russian lessons with a local tutor. We're using comprehensible input, so the tutor tells me a story using images and short sentences for me read and listen along to. The sessions last 30 minutes and there's time for me to ask questions for clarification. I write down new words and get occasional explanations of grammar but I'm not putting any pressure on myself to remember anything. I sometimes practice reading out particular words but there's no need for me to produce output. I don't think these lessons are strictly necessary as part of my current language strategy, I could continue progressing with what I've been doing over the past couple of months. But I think it's good to introduce new activities to keep things interesting for myself.  For the moment I've stopped passively listening to the Speakly stories and gone back to listening to D&D streams. I've listened to those stories for more than 100 hours o...

  Half way through December I caught the Omicron variation of COVID which coincided with time off work for Christmas and New Year. I took the opportunity to keep away from screens as much as possible and then stopped studying Russian for two weeks. As you can see this resulted in my average for the month dropping to 30 minutes per day. I started back into my usual routine yesterday and definitely noticed it being slightly more difficult to understand what I was reading. It makes me weary of taking time off for longer than two weeks. I don't have any particular resolutions when it comes to acquiring Russian other than to stick to the routine I've developed. But I would really like to increase the number of hours.  I'm going to try out some online 'lessons' but only if I can find a tutor / teacher that can facilitate my approach with comprehensible input. I would like to practice output (speaking) but I don't feel the need to force myself to hit particular goals. ...