Changing how I use Glossika and Speakly

I've recently changed how I use Glossika and Speakly. With Glossika I was simply listening to, reading and repeating lots of short sentences. I never recorded myself and never did the typing exercises. It wasn't my intention to try and memorise all these sentences.

When I use it I add 5 new sentences and repeat 25 old sentences, but I've often taken long breaks. That means I'm currently behind on 858 sentence reviews. 

However when I think about some of my speaking experiences over the past couple of weeks, as well as what I've been learning from Mezzofanti Guild I wonder if I should take it more seriously. I think I now have enough vocabulary and basic understanding of Russian that it's beneficial (and easier) for me to get some of these sentences or lexical chunks into my long term memory. Or better said to get these sentences or lexical chunks ingrained in my mind. The aim is not just to remember or recall after all, the aim is to think in Russian. There's a video at the end of this post which is an example of the Mezzofanti learning approach.

With that in mind I'm going to stop adding new sentence for a while and increase my repetitions to 75 - 100 per day. When I've cleared by backlog I'll add new sentences. This should be easier to achieve now that there is a Glossika app, which there wasn't when I first started.

In a similar way I've been using Speakly in bursts. Not because I don't find it useful, I think it's a great app. However I particularly like the monologues, which I've been listening to repeatedly as well as reading them in LingQ. I didn't want to continually unlock new stories and get too far ahead, preferring to work up to 80 - 90% recognised vocabulary when reading or listening to them.

But on the advice of someone on the ReFold Discord server I've decided to  start pushing ahead again and I will soon finish the 4th level (Intermediate I). When I first started I was mostly using the multiple choice and speech recognition option of learning, because I found spelling correctly challenging. Now I've switched over because I'm having an easier time with spelling (although it's still frustrating to repeatedly get just one letter wrong) and I'm getting enough real life conversation and pronunciation practice with my tutor.

I've also started to rehearse the mini-dialogues, and I might record them for myself for listening and repeating. Unfortunately I can't listen to them continuously one after each other in the app. Those dialogues use a lot of my recognised and activated vocabulary and are good examples of various kinds of grammar. Most importantly they are sentences that have practical use.

Perhaps it was a mistake to work with both these two resources in the way that I have been, and maybe I could be further ahead in my Russian learning journey if I'd stuck to the official 'program' as it were. 

However the reality is that I need to manage my motivation to do different activities. If that means switching up the types of activities I focus on then that's what I'll do.

Here's a good overview of a Donavan Nagel's (creator of Mezzofanti Guild) method of learning lexical chunks. Towards the end he points out that you really need to understand 90 to 95% of what you're saying for this to work. So perhaps I'm coming to this type of exercise at the right time after all.