Acquiring Russian The Natural Way

For anyone interested here's an overview of my Russian acquisition journey over the past 3 years (I started in August 2020). Click on any of the charts to get a closer look. I think this data is 98% accurate. However as time goes on I'm starting to encounter more and more Russian in day to day life which I don't count. For example, reading memes, seeing what friends post on social media, writing messages, meeting Russian speakers in real life. In all my activities I try to focus on material that is of practical use. So I don't read fantasy books like Harry Potter or watch media like Anime. I very rarely watch series or shows but when I do it's usually contemporary drama. In the 5% of time that I'm not reading or listening to material from Speakly I will watch street interviews or dialogues aimed at beginners (Easy Russian, Russian With Max). Activity Overview Passive Immersion : Listening to audio in the background while I do other things (work, cleaning, walkin...

I just reached 1000 words in Speakly which is Intermediate level 1. It seems that I've only used the app for a total of 88 Active Days and 272 Sessions . I'm not sure what each of these mean, but that comes to 11.4 words per active day and 3.7 words per session. It should be noted that I've taken breaks lasting months in order to focus on the the listening exercises which I've been importing into LingQ. In the beginning I was also avoiding the writing exercises but a couple of months ago I decided do them in stead of the multiple choice exercises. I'm more confident with my spelling so it't not as frustrating to do them as when I first started (although it's still not fun to consistently get 1 letter wrong in long phrases). I still think the main value of this app is being able to unlock the dialogues and listening exercises but I'm no longer worried about getting too far ahead. I don't have to listen to stories if I don't feel ready for them ye...

Yesterday I had another conversation practice session with my tutor and I'm tentatively guessing that 50 minutes of the full hour was conducted in Russian. I should record my next session to see whether my estimation is accurate. Most importantly the topics of conversation were completely unprepared. Normally I practice answering questions around a particular topic in advance of the session. I don't try to memorise and repeat my answers verbatim but it helps me to learn some new relevant words so I'm not going in to the session completely blind. We'll talk about the prepared topic but allow ourselves to go on tangents. However this time we never got around to speaking about the topic. I told my tutor about a funny incident that had happened to me in the morning, then we spoke about the types of houses and apartments where people live in different countries. Finally we talked about the economic situation in the countries we live in. Of course it was a broken conversation...

I've just hit the 20,000 reps mark with Glossika. Repetitions: 20,000 Sentences: 1,251 Repetition per sentence: 16 Time: 71:12 hours L evel: Russian Elementary, A1 High, 54.2% Is Glossika useful for learning Russian? Has it benefited me? At the very least I think it's provided me with a lot or reading and pronunciation practice but I can't truthfully say to what extent it's benefited my understanding and speaking abilities. There's a lot of blind faith involved with using Glossika and I understand why people don't want to spend the money for that (although I've noticed that they have a new payment structure where you can pay less for just learning a single language). It should be noted that I haven't been as hardcore with this program as is recommended. They advocate 100 to 200 reps per day and I would usually do 50 to 75 with many extended breaks. This meant that I had built up a large backlog of reps. I didn't worry about it because I wasn't...

  July 2023 Statistics Passive watching and listening: 15:34 hours Active watching or listening: 0:23 minutes Vocabulary and Sentences: 0:13 minutes Reading with Audio: 2:12 hours Reading with no Audio: 2:13 hours Active Study: 6:48 hours Personal Lessons: 4:00 hours Conversation Practice: 0:05 minutes Total: 31:30 hours Daily Average: 1:01 hours My time spent with Russian has jumped up to 1 hour per day after a couple of months where I wasn't spending as much time with the language. I finished a couple of non-language related projects which I meant I've been able to plan my days a bit better. The weather has also been very bad for July so I've been spending a bit more time indoors compared to what you would expect in the summer. I've experiences a big boost in motivation due to the conversation practice I've been having with my tutor. During these sessions there are long stretches where we only speak in Russian and we're having a real back and forth conversatio...

In my last post I wrote an interest I've had in Donovan Nagel's approach to language learning. I believe it's not a departure from what I've been doing so far, but an adjustment of my daily activities to better fit my current abilities and goals. I've been piecing together what I believe his method to be from the various articles and videos he has put out.  In an interview he said: Learn a little at a time and use it a lot. Focus on just a handful of new expressions at a time and use them repeatedly until they become habit. It’s much better to master a few things at a time than to try and take in everything at once and learn very little. Speak very early on as much as possible. If you wait until you’re ready you’re wasting time. Use what you know now even if it’s grammatically wrong at first as this is the best way to improve. And on Twitter he wrote: “Successful language learners got there in spite of grammar study, not because of grammar study. Language acquisitio...

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...