~ 100 hours
Biweekly Update -- ~100 hours
The last couple of weeks have gone well during the weekdays, and less well during the weekends. I've regularly hit 2 hours on the former, but I haven't been at home Friday-Sunday both of these past weekends, and didn't even hit my minimum of an hour for a few days. I'm not normally this busy on weekends -- there just happened to be two events back-to-back -- but I ought to put in a sort of "travel plan" to ensure I hit my 1 hour goal even when schedules are upset again in the future.
I'm going to use this update not just to talk about what I've been working on the past couple of weeks, but also give a kind of overview of the things I do most days. It's on the longer side, and includes info I probably won't mention in future updates. Because the update is so long, I'm not going to go into depth on any one topic today.
Overview
My schedule differs pretty radically day to day between school and work, so I can't have a consistent study time each day. This has made building habits somewhat difficult, but I'm doing my best. Aside from Anki, the amount of time I spend on each activity is also pretty variable, and I instead aim for a total amount of time studying: 1 hour minimum, 2 hour stretch goal. My success can sometimes feel pretty binary. Either I don't have enough time or mismanage my time so badly that I can't even hit the 1 hour mark, especially on holidays or weekends, or I really get in the groove of things and surpass 2 hours. There's very little in-between.
Anki -- Everyday
Even on weekends, I've managed to complete Anki every single day. 20 words per day has remained manageable, still taking only 20-30 minutes per day to complete. My current streak as of writing this is 15 days, and the longest streak I've ever had in all my years of using Anki for various things is 26 days, so I'm a little over half-way to beating my previous record. I was initially worried I would be racking up leeches once I turned the threshold down, but that hasn't been the case. On the first couple days I had several leeches each, but since then it's mellowed out to 0-2 leeches a day. That doesn't feel too bad, and it helps to know I have a plan to return to them in the near(ish) future.
The time it takes to do Anki every day depends on the number of reviews of course, but I've found it can also depend greatly on the 20 new cards. If there is a new card whose word I know immediately, either because it's an early-learned word (I only just got cпасибо today!) or because it's cognate with English or French (I also got поэт today), I press "easy." I guess I could be suspending it instead, but "easy" is both quicker, and ensures my guess wasn't a fluke by showing me the word again in the near future. (This is the only time I use the "easy" button, and I don't use the "hard" button at all, as per recommendations for FSRS.) If the new set of 20 words includes a lot of knowns, it speeds up the Anki time significantly.
Freeflow Immersion -- Comprehensible Videos -- Almost Everyday
I try to get in some comprehensible input videos aimed at learners every day, though I missed it a couple of the weekend days while not at home. While watching, I'll rewind if I don't understand something and want to hear it again, but I almost never look up words. I also don't use the Russian subtitles, even when human-made ones are available, since I want to use these to train my listening comprehension (I've used some subtitle files in Lute though: see below). There are three main channels I pull from most days, though I do sometimes watch other stuff.
I'm almost to the end of the Beginner 1 playlist on Comprehensible Russian. I watch 1-2 videos of hers per day and I'm currently in the Dostoevsky series, which is very interesting! I really appreciate that in this playlist, she has been looking at various cultural and historical topics. They're much more interesting than most learner material I've used so far, while remaining very comprehensible. This has been the highlight of learner material for me.
I'm also still going through In Russian From Afar's A1 playlist. These are less understandable without relistening, due to going more quickly, having a conversational format, and having fewer images and explanations. That said, they feel like they are perfect for my level, as they require quite a bit of focus to understand, but it's still within reach. The topics are much more the standard beginners' fare compared to the Comprehensible Russian channel, but the host is very fun, and includes a lot of humor in the skits.
Finally, the last channel that I use almost every day is Inhale Russian. This one is the easiest to understand, as the host is careful to use an image or pantomime for nearly every word. This allows him to use some niche (compared to other A1 material) vocabulary, which enables some interesting topics. On the other hand, because he is careful to make every word comprehensible to a complete beginner, it can feel a bit slow when you already know most of the words used. I usually end with his videos because there's less brainpower required.
The channel is brand new, and so far there's only a "Beginner" playlist. In the future, I would love to see a Beginner 2 playlist in his current format, but only including images/explanations/pantomimes for words that are not in, say, the most common 500 words or so. All in all, his videos are excellent for a complete beginner, and I still learn new words from them, so I plan on finishing out the playlist.
I've also watched various videos from other creators making easy Russian content, but as far as those other channels go, they're slightly more difficult and will be better for later, or they have more English or aren't as CI-focused as I'd personally like, or they simply don't vibe with me as much. However, I'll eventually get around to using them more, as I run out of content in the main three and more difficult material becomes usable for freeflow.
Intensive Immersion -- Lute -- Most Days
I have gotten in some Lute most days the past couple weeks. I've been using it to go over the In Russian From Afar puppet videos that I've already watched in freeflow immersion, using their subtitles for the text and audio from the videos to read along with. These take about 30 minutes each to comb through, looking up all words I'm unsure of, and creating dictionary entries. After finishing these sets of videos, I'll likely join In Russian From Afar's patreon and start working through the podcasts using the transcripts, just as Dario Aranguiz describes doing in his excellent blog post documenting his first 180 hours of study.
I may also add some more difficult texts to Lute to begin getting some experience with fiction for native speakers. There's a site, https://web-skazki.ru, which has many easy short stories aimed at young kids. The text is easily copy and pasted, and there is audio to download for each story. These are definitely too difficult to just read smoothly, but may work for some intensive study on Lute.
After getting my feet wet with these stories, I may upload the first few chapters of the first Hunger Games book. The first Hunger Games book is to me what the first Harry Potter is to many language learners: I've read the book multiple times and know it pretty well, and it was my first proper novel in both French and Swedish. It's definitely way above my level, but it would also definitely be more engaging than stories aimed at 4 year olds, if I can stomach the difficulty.
However, until I'm ready to attempt native material, I may not continue to use Lute as heavily as I have. After some reflection, I'm not sure going over the subtitles of videos I've already watched on Lute is nearly as useful as the reading I do in physical books and PDFs. The video subtitles become too easy and repetitive when used for intensive reading, even when watching the video itself was difficult. And when reading a PDF, I'm forced to reckon with the meaning of a word for a longer time before deciding I need to go out of my way to look it up.
I'm also not sure manually saving definitions for Lute's personal dictionary is useful. Once it's done and you see a word again, its nice to be able to mouse over instead of clicking and waiting for the dictionary to load, and the feature to pull out all the sentences a word has appeared in is also nice, but I'm not sure nice enough to justify the time sunk in manually copying dictionary definitions and linking all seen declensions/conjugations to the parent word. I don't feel like I'm working my brain very hard while doing this, and only serves to slow the reading down to a crawl.
I don't plan on cutting out Lute entirely: it'll be the only reasonable way to read native material like the Skazki stories or Hunger Games anytime soon. But until I get to that point, I might try and use it less, and read with my physical and PDF readers more as it feels slightly more impactful.
Intensive Immersion -- Assimil PDFs & audio -- Some days
I'm slowly reading two different editions of Russian without Toil, one from the 50s and one from the 10s. With non-Lute reading, I'm trying to strike a balance where I'm still looking up words that are new to me, unlike with my freeflow video immersion, but I'm not analyzing the text word by word or line by line, as with Lute. (However, I may pivot to a more intense strategy if I lessen my Lute usage, as discussed above.)
Not going to lie: while I appreciate Assimil's format for being an early source of comprehensible text, there are many little annoyances with them, which I may go into in a future review when I finish the books. These annoyances and the comparative convenience of Lute makes reading Assimil less appealing, so I don't do it every day. Because of multi-day breaks, I have to review old lessons more often than intended, making it move even slower. I'm at about lesson 35 in the 2010s Assimil and lesson 20 in the 1950s Assimil (the 50s Assimil is more difficult, likely due to age).
Once I finish Assimil, I have a small collection of other physical and ebook readers with audio to get to.
Other tracked stuff
My family in a different state uses Duolingo every day, and I do it with them as a social thing. I don't think I would use it if not for them, but I will admit it's an easy way to add 5 minutes to my tracked time while waiting in line at the grocery store, using the restroom, etc. I've tested out of a bunch of the levels in order to make it more difficult, and try to puzzle through each sentence while looking up as few words as possible. I know I'm getting something out of it because I've recognized words and idiomatic constructions in both freeflow and intensive immersion from Duolingo. I know its not particularly efficient, but I figure its active enough to track.
I used to use Speakly in a similar way to Duolingo, but its main learning activities are very output-focused. You can turn on a mode where all the exercises are multiple-choice instead, but then they feel like spelling quizzes or grammar exercises, where most possible answers are very close. For example, choosing between an a or an o in an unstressed syllable where they would be pronounced the same, or picking out the correct case ending. The sentences are usually easily understandable, so they aren't very good for general input or vocab learning, unlike with Duolingo. I could try and test ahead for more interesting sentences, but the exercises are already difficult because I haven't actively studied the nitty gritty spelling and grammar it tests you on.
It's honestly kind of rough going and there's no social aspect, so I've mostly dropped it for now. I only occasionally use the unlocked listening exercises for non-Assimil listening practice. I may come back to Speakly once I have some more explicit grammar study or immersion time under my belt, though.
The Donald Duck reading I mentioned in the last update is still going on, tho I only do it a few times a week. This is intensive reading, where I'm looking up every word I don't know. It's still genuinely fun though, and something that I would likely be doing anyway in another language if not Russian. I'm still gathering example panels from it to add to my Anki deck, but I'm starting to be more selective with my panel choices, favoring ones that are closer to i + 1.
Untracked passive & incomprehensible immersion
I've watched/listened to Russian language lets plays of my favorite games and various other native videos that show up in the recommended feed on my Russian-language youtube account. I can only pick out some individual words and phrases while watching, and I'm not always paying complete attention, so I don't track this time. It simply doesn't feel like I'm getting enough out of it to do so.
Ditto listening to Russian music and ditto playing Skyrim and other video games in Russian. Either I'm not paying close enough attention, or it's too incomprehensible, or it's not dense enough to really feel like I'm learning anything from it, and often all three at once. It's motivating, and it's probably better than nothing, but it's not tracking-worthy.
I think Refold generally includes incomprehensible input as tracked immersion time as long as you're paying attention and picking up words, but I'm not putting in many hours doing that anyway, I just generally don't see the point, and it'd make playing video games and watching random youtube junk feel like kind of a chore.
This does lead to the sticky question of how I know when it's comprehensible enough to start tracking. Of course I'll never track it if I'm not paying active attention, and density is a tough nut that I have yet to crack, but on the comprehensibility issue, I have something resembling a plan. At 225 hours, I'll begin tracking this stuff when 1. I'm actively paying attention and 2. I know the material deeply (movies I've seen multiple times, games I've played for many hours, etc). At that point, I'll also evaluate when to start tracking things that is new to me.
Thanks for reading!