About

This blog is a place to track my Russian acquisition journey.

The idea of 'acquiring' a language vs 'learning' it comes from being inspired by people like Stephen Krashen, Steve Kaufmann, Jeff Brown and methods like All Japanese All The Time, the Mass Immersion Approach and Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS).

These people believe acquiring a language is not like learning other skills. A big part of the process is trusting your brain to recognise patterns instead of consciously trying to think and translate everything from your native language and back again. You can read about my current approach here: My language acquisition method.

Please leave comments, thoughts, feedback, ideas and useful resources. I'm interested to share this journey with other Russian language learners and acquirers.

Milestone Diary:

22 August 2020: When I listen to Russian D&D streams I understand various words for example: 'I', 'you', 'want' plus various colours and numbers. My vocabulary is probably around 40 or 50 words including numbers and colours. 

16 September 2020: I had a dream in which I tried to speak in Russian.

27 September 2020: I'm noticing random words pop into my head more often. If I don't know the meaning I look them up with my Google Translate app.

28 October 2020: I had a moment of high comprehension when hearing a couple of sentences of natural spoken Russian. Russian Listening Comprehension: A character description

3 November 2020: 100 hours of input, close to 78% of which was background listening and passive watching. 

3 August 2021: Another dream in which I speak Russian.

26 August 2021: A Russian ad on YouTube caught my attention and I understood some of what the man was saying.

3 September 2021: I watched this vlog and understood quite a bit Russian Vlog

23 March 2022: First real world attempt to speak Russian

2 June 2022: I read and fully understand (except for one word) meme text that a friend posted on Instagram.

August 2022: I spent a couple of weeks in one of the Baltic countries and have had exposure to native speaking Russians. Places like the airport, shops, cafes and bars. Sometimes I would just listen in, sometimes I engaged in short conversations. I've been surprised at being able to understand parts of the conversations people were having, although sometimes I could understand the individual words but not the sentences. The conversations I had were very basic but I've been complemented on my accent.

11 September 2022: 800 words learned in Speakly

25 November 2022: When reading texts I sometimes let the language flow over me. I'm not focussing so much on the meaning of the individual words but on the meaning of the whole sentence. I don't know if this is because I've memorised the meaning from listening over and over or if this is a new stage in how I understand Russian. I've heard Stephen Kaufmann talk about letting the language wash over him so I might be experiencing the same.

Spring 2023: Hit 1000 hours of study+immersion in around 1000 days. I started doing conversation practice with the language exchange app Tandem. I also visited a Baltic country again and had some short conversations with native level speakers.

19 July 2023: An hour conversation with my tutor with about 75 - 90% in Russian.

12 August 2023: 20,000 Reps of 1,251 sentences in Glossika

12 August 2023: An hour* of unprepared conversation in Russian

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