Acquiring Russian: February Report

 


I started the month quite well, keeping up with the good work I had done in January but not surprisingly I became distracted by Putin's invasion of Ukraine. War is always a horrible thing but this time I'm experiencing it in a whole new way. 

For more than a year I've been using social media to interact with Russian speakers in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine in order to learn the language of regular people. I've been watching YouTubers, following Instagram accounts and have been interacting with people on iTalki. Whereas before I was learning about every day life like going to the supermarket, now I'm seeing those people post about bombings, sanctions and becoming refugees. 

My tutor is Ukrainian, obviously we stopped the lessons when the invasion happened. What can you in a situation like that, will she want to keep teaching Russian? I can't blame her if she won't.

So I've been spending a lot of time following the day by day developments and have not been concerned with whether the content in English and Russian. I have been exposed to the Russian language while consuming all this content but I haven't kept track of how much. Although it's been satisfying in a macabre sort of way to be able to understand some of the conversations of the people involved in the war.

It's crazy to think that I've been learning Russian in order to be able to walk into a restaurant and order food or talk to someone about their hobbies but now I'm watching the videos of soldiers posting on Twitter from a war zone.

I've never for a moment thought about stopping my studies but it does put a huge damper on my personal ambitions. I was seriously thinking about visiting Russia this summer. Now that possibility seems very far away. Will I ever be able to go or will the country become closed off like it was in the Soviet times? I really hope Ukraine can successfully defend itself and return to normality as soon as possible.

February '21 Statistics

Passive watching and listening: 19:26 hours
Active watching or Listening: 5:03 hours
Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:10 hours
Reading with Audio: 0:30 hours
Reading with no Audio: 0 hours
Active Study: 0:33 hours
Personal Lessons: 2:30 hours
Total: 28:12 hours
Daily Average: 0:54 hours

January '21 Statistics

Passive watching and listening: 36:14 hours
Active watching or Listening: 4:09 hours
Vocabulary and Sentences: 0 hours
Reading with Audio: 2:28 hours
Reading with no Audio: 0 hours
Active Study: 2:19 hours
Personal Lessons: 2:45 hours
Total: 47:56 hours
Daily Average: 1:33 hours

Totals Since August 2020

Passive watching and listening: 401:28 hours
Active watching or Listening: 40:09 hours
Vocabulary and Sentences: 63:60 hours
Reading with Audio: 65:17 hours
Reading with no Audio: 0 hours
Active Study: 61:50 hours
Personal Lessons: 2:45 hours
Total: 635:29 hours
Daily Average: 1:09 hours

Comments

  1. CZMarch 4, 2022 at 5:21 PM

    Hi, it's CZ from Road to Russia. Nice progress updates, awesome to see another Russian learner with a blog. I also was planning to travel to Russia in the near future, so it's a massive shame this has all happened. Hopefully it's over soon and no more Ukrainians have to lose their lives.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ARMarch 5, 2022 at 4:23 AM

      Thanks for dropping by! It's a terrible thing indeed. I hope it ends soon.

      Delete

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