Acquiring Russian The Natural Way

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 ...

December Statistics Passive watching and listening: 37:25 hours (Mostly listening) Active watching: 3:46 hours (Mostly comprehensible input) Pronunciation, Vocabulary and Sentences: 13:42 hours (Anki) Active Study: 1:14 minutes (Grammar) Total: 56:09 hours December was a good month for me although my routine was interrupted. On the 23rd of December I finished my work contract and wasn't behind the laptop as much, which meant that my passive immersions was almost reduced to zero. The one thing that stayed consistent was studying the Anki decks.  Initially I was adding 10 new words per day but I found that I was struggling with retention and had to repeat words over and over again to get them to stick. Since then I've dropped down to 7 new words which seems more manageable. I wouldn't mind spending more time with Anki but I want to be efficient. I'm still revising Xefjord's  200 words and phrases  which is now down to less than 2 minutes a day.   I randomly found ...

November Statistics Passive watching and listening: 58:58 hours (Mostly listening) Active watching: 3:07 hours (Mostly comprehensible input) Pronunciation, Vocabulary and Sentences: 8:01 hours (Anki) Reading with audio: 0:30 minutes (Dialogue) Total: 70:36 hours November was another lockdown month here in London which meant I was able to spend more time on my  Russian acquisition mission. As I mentioned in previous posts I reassessed how I was spending my time  half way through the month. I stopped using the Fluent Forever Pronunciation Trainer  because I had reached the point of diminishing returns and I refocused my attention on increasing my passive vocabulary. Although I said I would spend more time on Fluent Forever's  The Most Awesome Word List You Have Ever Seen , that didn't end up happening.  Instead I spent roughly 10 minutes a day on Xefjord's  200 words and phrases  and 10 minutes on a frequency deck of the 1000 most used Russian words...

While listening to a Dungeons & Dragons stream I experienced my best moment of understanding real spoken Russian.  The game master was describing a magician who was wearing a tall turban made out of some notable material. His magic was derived from astronomical knowledge involving the sun and stars.  It was just two or three sentences but my comprehension was high with almost no translating happening in my mind. I heard the words and I saw the image in my mind. I understood some words like   тюрбан , because they are similar to English. Others were words that I acquired from the 625 words list or from watching comprehensible input videos.

While researching language learning methods that draw inspiration from Stephen Krashen I discovered All Japanese All The Time and the website  Mass Immersion Approach  which is run by the YouTuber:  Matt vs Japan This is the video that inspired me to have Russian Dungeons & Dragons games playing in the background while I do other things. In it Matt describes the difference between Active and Partially Active Listening (the latter he has since renamed as  Passive Listening ). Just to be clear, my definition of Passive Listening is having Russian dialogue in the background while I'm doing something else. My attention on the dialogue differs depending on the tasks I'm doing. If I'm reading or writing then it's in the background of my consciousness, if I'm playing a game it's more in the foreground. When I recognise phrases or words my attention becomes even more focused as I gain some understanding of the content. According to Matt's definitions I might...