Acquiring Russian The Natural Way

I'm still alive and I'm still acquiring Russian. Although I've only spent 21 minutes per day on the language a big life change is happening soon that will positively impact my Russian acquisition journey. More on that in a moment. The main activities I did over the past year were: using the Speakly App (Active Study), listening to the Speakly stories (Passive Immersion), listening and reading along with Glossika (Reading with Audio) and using the Taalhammer app (Vocabulary/Sentences).  I did not get as much conversations practice with people or AI (Free Conversation Practice) as I would have liked but that will all change because this year I'm moving to a country that is home to some native Russian speakers (no, not Russia). This will mean that I will more often encounter Russian speakers in my day to day life. For tracking purposes this means I will no longer track real life conversations under 'Free Conversation Practice' reserving that for time spent in forma...

  July 2025 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 6:27 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 hours Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 minutes Reading with Audio: 01:00 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:00 hours Active Study: 0:00 minutes Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice (LinguaTalk): 0:00 hours Games: 0:00 Total: 06:27 hours Daily Average: 0:23 minutes June 2025 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 09:41 hours Active watching or listening: 0:58 hours Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:40 minutes Reading with Audio: 01:01 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:56 hours Active Study: 3:48 minutes Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice (LinguaTalk): 0:00 hours Games: 0:00 Total: 17:04 hours Daily Average: 0:34 minutes May 2025 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 0:00 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 hours Vocabulary and Sentences: 2:24 minutes Reading with Audio: 01:00 hours Reading with...

  It was a quiet month although I'm doing much better in the past week. Something noteworthy to mention is that I had a short conversation with a Russian man and also separately with a Latvian woman. They were both very complementary of my ability. Although I believe I seem better than I actually am when I'm speaking about a narrow set of topics. Still, it's very motivating to get such feedback from native speakers. The activities I'm focussing on currently are: 1. Learning new words with the Speakly App (I'm almost at 1800). I regret not being consistent with this because I could have easily 'learned' another 750 words with only 5 to 10 minutes a day. I didn't realise how long it's been since I was consistently using the app. It's a real shame because that should have been the minimum activity every day. 2. Using  Taalhammer  to learn useful phrases. I'm constantly adding to my useful phrases deck whenever I discover or think of a phrase tha...

A lot less Russian than I would like. I'm still motivated to learn. Last night I had a short conversation with a Russian couple and they took me seriously as a learner. However it's now been more than a year of very limited studying, due to instability and a lack of routine in my life. I'm doing my best to get back on track. I've been focusing on useful phrases using Taalhammer . It's a shame because I was doing so well and I can have short fun interactions in the language. I'm very busy with a ton of things at the moment so that's all I have for today. May will be very similar but I'm going to do my best to turn things around this summer. April 2025 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 3:13 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 hours Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 hours Reading with Audio: 2:46 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:00 hours Active Study: 0:00 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice (LinguaTal...

  I'm very motivated at the moment, while my average time is not very high a good proportion of my activity was dedicated to impactful activities. As I mentioned in previous posts I'm dedicating more time to memorising useful phrases for everyday conversations (which is my primary goal at the moment). I'm also experimenting with a new AI tool: LanguaTalk  which I'm very impressed with so far. I will do a review of it soon. January 2025 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 8:04 hours Active watching or listening: 0:09 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 1:42 minutes Reading with Audio: 05:42 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:27 hours Active Study: 6:22 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice (LinguaTalk): 0:15 minutes Games: 0:00 Total: 22:40 hours Daily Average: 0:44 hours

I've 'learned' another 200 words (or more accurately  lemmas ) with Speakly over the past couple of months. 'Learned' is a broad category ranging from 'I can use this in conversation' to 'I might recognise it in certain contexts'.  I've been more consistent with Speakly since the start of the new year and overall enjoying what it provides in my Russian acquisition journey.  I have mentioned before that I'm learning some of the words more easily than others because I have encountered them in other situations. That could be in other apps like Glossika, from importing the Speakly monologues into LingQ or perhaps when reading memes. This means that some days I 'learn' three new words easily, other times I can struggle for a week to get a word into my memory (an even then I will only recognise it in a particular context). I'm not sure what proportion of the words are somewhat familiar to me and how many are completely new. Before it fe...

Attempting conversations in Russian sheds lights on the areas where my knowledge and abilities are lacking. While speaking I'll realise that there are particular words and phrases that I don't yet know or topics where I could do with a larger vocabulary. I've come to the conclusion that I should be more proactive in filling in those gaps of my knowledge. To do that I need memorise words, phrases and sentences so that I can use them immediately. I've been collecting useful phrases and sentences for a while but I need to be more deliberate in my memorisation efforts. The most effective memorisation technique is 'active recall', basically testing yourself. See this short video explaining the process.  Now with SRS software like Anki you can automate the process of making sure you are prompted to remember information at the correct time (just as you are about to forget it). But I'm not entirely sure how that applies in this scenario. Someone in in the comments ...

Just a quick note on success story. I had a short conversation with a Russian person and they complimented my pronunciation and seemed impressed by my ability. Just celebrating the small wins.

I'm mostly back on track with my Russian acquisition journey. It's been a strange year with inconsistent study. On a positive note I've had some good interactions with native Russian speakers which is very motivating. I want to push hard this year in order to get to a comfortable conversational level. December 2024 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 18:37 hours Active watching or listening: 0:11 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 minutes Reading with Audio: 04:29 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:00 hours Active Study: 4:45 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice: 0:00 minutes Games: 0:00 Total: 28:02 hours Daily Average: 0:56 hours November 2024 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 18:27 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 minutes Reading with Audio: 12:52 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:15 hours Active Study: 0:00 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Fre...

The days are growing darker and I've been putting more time in to my Russian acquisition project, albeit the most low effort actions. Listening to Speakly monologues and listening and repeating along with Glossika. I need to get back to regular conversation practice but at least I'm putting in the time again after not doing anything in October. I should mention that I had a couple of short interactions with Russian speakers which was fun but I was definitely rusty.    November 2024 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 18:27 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 minutes Reading with Audio: 12:52 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:15 hours Active Study: 0:00 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice: 0:00 minutes Games: 0:00 Total: 31:34 hours Daily Average: 1:03 hours October 2024 Statistics N/A September 2024 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 5:20 hours Active watching or listeni...

  Well it's been another poor couple of months for my language studies. But I have a reason and I'm hopeful that I'm about to turn a corner. Since the start of the year I've been doing some work related studying which took up a lot of time that I would normally dedicate to Russian. In October I realised that I was close to finishing the hardest parts of the courses I was taking, so I decided to just focus on that in order to get it out of the way as soon as possible. While I still have some more work to do it's not as urgent.  Getting that out of the way now means I now have more time and mental energy available for Russian. It did mean that I didn't dedicate any time to studying the language. My only exposure being some small interactions and stumbling upon Russian language online. My ability to speak was definitely affected and to a lesser extend my comprehension ability. I'm determined to have a strong finish to 2024. October 2024 Statistics N/A September...

I've been attending a Russian language group in my city over the past few weeks. It attracts a mixture of learners and speakers and it's a great environment to practice my listening and speaking skills. Usually there are 15 to 20 people attending and people naturally split into small group of 3 to 5 people. There's no set agenda, people just talk about what interests them. The most recent meeting lasted about 3 and a half hours and I was immersed in Russian 90% of the time. I'm listening a lot more than I'm speaking and I sometimes need to ask for a translation to English to make sure I'm still following the conversation. But I feel comfortable with ambiguity, and usually have a good understanding of what each person is saying. Examples of topics discussed include where to find particular types of restaurants in the city, politics and culture in various countries, work and hobbies. It's very motivating to be able to take part in a conversation, even with my ...

A great article with lots of advice about language learning. It closely matches my personal experience so far which will help to keep me motivated to continue with the way that I'm learning Russian. The main points that are covered in the article. So, here are the most important lessons I've learned: Think in ideas, not words  "A mediocre workout done religiously outperforms a perfect workout never done" Going abroad is a force multiplier: if you're not making progress at home, you won't magically begin improving just because you uproot your life You'll overestimate how much you need to know to begin doing cool things in a language and underestimate the gap between that point and fluency You will learn as well as you need to learn to do what your lifestyle demands of you, no better or worse; if you’re stuck, light a fire somewhere  Achieving fluency means you know one more language; you'll be the same person you are now, for better and worse, plus one ...

  In my last report I wrote about how I had a big drop in my average study time due to various life circumstances. Half-way through August I started rededicating myself to this acquisition journey. There's nothing much to say other than that I've regained my motivation and I'm get back on track.  August 2024 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 7:07 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 minutes Reading with Audio: 3:00 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:00 hours Active Study: 1:32 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice: 2:00 minutes Games: 0:00 Total: 13:40 hours Daily Average: 0:26 hours July 2024 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 3:10 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 minutes Reading with Audio: 0:27 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:00 hours Active Study: 1:20 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 ho...

I started listening to native Russian content right from the start of this language acquisition project. Specifically videos of people playing Dungeons & Dragons on YouTube like this one  Форт Рузда | Вечерние Кости | ЭНОА | Глава 1 .  This is before I discovered Glossika and Speakly and I wanted to expose myself to Russian in order to get used to how it's spoken. The tones, the rhythms, where the gaps are between words etc. It seemed like a natural bottle neck for being able to have conversations in Russian, and being able to speak in the language has always been my number one goal. Sometimes I wonder if all that listening was not an efficient use of time. But I didn't know about those other resources yet, so I was doing the best I could. On Reddit I saw a thread where people talk about what they would have done differently to learn their target language. A lot of people are mentioning that they should have started listening more sooner. It seems that many people place a ...

I recently attended another gathering of Russian speakers (native and learners). This time I found myself in a group of more advanced learners (3 others) and was part of a conversation that lasted somewhere between an hour and an hour and 30 minutes.  The conversation touched on why we are learning Russian, the Russian higher education system, central Asian restaurants in our city and several other topics. I was definitely the least skilled speaker in the group and spent a lot more time listening than speaking. But I had a great time. It's very interesting how a real life conversation provides so much more context compared to a podcast or even a lesson with a teacher.  My understanding of the conversation ebbed and flowed. Sometimes I understood everything, sometimes only the general topic. I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the conversation between the other three too often but occasionally I would ask about a specific word or would ask for a quick run down in English. Th...

In my previous post I mentioned how this year I've not been studying Russian as much as previously was the case. For the first couple of years I was averaging about an hour of exposure to the language per day. But so far this year it's probably not even 15 minutes per day, even counting the memes I see on Instagram. The reason for this laps is due to a change in personal circumstances which interrupted my study habits.  But I have to be honest that I'm often skipping opportunities to use an app or listen to Russian monologues such as when I'm commuting or in the gym. Those are relatively low-effort activities that I could be doing in what is otherwise 'down-time'. In July I visited the Baltic again but didn't have as many opportunities to speak Russian as in the past which was disappointing. But it made me realise how motivated I still am to actually speak with people. After all, that's my primary motivation. So when I got back home I decided to attend a...

I visited the Baltic again in July and had a couple of short interaction in Russian, but not as much as in the past. We're more than half-way through the year and so far the amount of studying I've been doing is abysmally low, almost non-existent. I lay the blame partially a change in my personal circumstances which threw me out of my regular routines and I've struggled to build up new study habits. I don't think it's a lack of motivation as I've had some really good experiences speaking in Russian recently (which I'll cover in my next post). All I can do I start small and build from there. July 2024 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 3:10 hours Active watching or listening: 0:00 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:00 minutes Reading with Audio: 0:27 hours Reading with no Audio: 0:00 hours Active Study: 1:20 hours Tutor Lessons (Conversation Practice): 0:00 hours Free Conversation Practice: 0:00 minutes Games: 0:00 Total: 0:00 hours Daily Average: 0:...

  I've 'learned' (a differing mixture of recognition and recall) another 100 words (or more accurately  lemmas ) in Speakly. As you can see I've only been using the app for five days after a break that lasted more than a month. Something that I might have mentioned in other posts about Speakly is that I'm learning some of the words more easily than others because I have come across them before. That could be in other apps like Glossika, from importing the Speakly monologues into LingQ or perhaps when reading memes.  I can't exactly say what proportion of the words are somewhat familiar to me and how many are completely new. It feels like the split is 20 / 80 (familiar/unfamiliar), but I'm just guessing. Because I import the Speakly monologues into LingQ I'm in effect working ahead of the main vocabulary acquisition exercises. For a while I completely stopped doing the main vocabulary exercises and just read and listened to the first 15 or so monologues o...

I've signed up to this great service that sends out a summary of international news in your target language. You can choose from 30 different languages and set the difficulty level of summaries. Since I've set it to beginner level it's usually just a sentence or two. It's free to sign up: https://noospeak.com/