attempting to learn russian

~ 110 Hours, and talking about the 225 hour goal

Intro

Howdy, folks! :) Not much exciting in the update. Afterwards, I'll talk about future plans.

Update ~110 hours

Freeflow immersion -- Comprehensible Videos on Youtube

I finished Comprehensible Russian's Beginner 1 playlist! Excited to move on to Beginner 2 and learn about Russian Cultural History, but a little sad to be starting the final playlist on the channel.

In Russian From Afar's A1 playlist is still going well. I think I will have to rewatch some of the Vasya videos, since they are more difficult and I don't usually catch everything the first time around. Maybe I'll start watching them first interactively, with Russian subs turned on and looking up words, then again in my normal freeflow mode. The slow Russian and Russian story videos feel much easier.

Intensive Reading -- Lute

I went ahead with my plan to do less of this and more of the book reading, below. That said, I want to get back to it after finishing the In Russian From Afar A1 playlist and getting into podcasts with transcripts. Further into the future, I'll use it for intensively reading native content

Intensive Reading -- Assimil

I have a new system for reading Assimil with audio:

  1. listen to the audio while following along with the text. keep pace with the audio without looking things up.
  2. go through the text slowly while checking words and phrases I don't know against the translations and footnotes
  3. listen to the audio while following along with the text again.
  4. listen to the audio alone

This looks like a lot, but doing all four steps for a single chapter takes less than ten minutes. I can read a full unit (6 lessons plus a review dialogue) in just under an hour. When I move on to other readers, I'll use the same method, except step 2 will likely require using an external dictionary.

I would like to get through my easy readers that have audio before the 225 hour mark: Assimil 2011, Assimil 1951, Начинаем читать по-русски, and 101 Conversations in Easy Russian. They all progress in difficulty as they go, so I'm playing with the idea of staggering them so I read, say, the first 10 readings from each of the books, then the next 10, etc.

I'm also still indulging in Donald Duck, of course. :)

Anki

20 words/day continues to be workable. I've started to get 120+ reviews every day, so it's taking slightly longer to review (25-35 mins instead of 20-30). It's still well within my tolerance, though. If I can keep this up, I'll hit 1000 cards next weekend.

I've set a hard limit for Anki at 45 minutes. If it ever takes longer than 45 minutes for three days in a row, I'll lower my new cards each day to 15.

Future Plans

Learning Stages

I've mentioned a few times that I'll be doing certain things at the 225 hour mark, or that I want to finish certain things by then. Let me explain.

I took Dreaming Spanish's roadmap, multiplying the number of hours for each stage by 1.5 to account for Russian's difficulty, and made a chart out of graph paper containing 1000 boxes split into these stages. It's now hanging on my door, and I update it every week or so, filling a box for every hour I studied that week. It's gratifying to watch the number of filled boxes grow over time.

Having specific hour markers to look forward to is also helpful for motivation and for planning. For example, I'm tempted to do more with native-level material, even though it will likely be painful and inefficient. Telling myself to wait until a certain hour mark is more satisfying than looking forward to some nebulous time in the future.

One downside to this system is that the Dreaming Spanish roadmap is based on a method where reading is not recommended at all until you are hundreds of hours into immersion. I do think there is merit to the method: it seems like a good way to avoid bad pronunciation habits, saying words based on how they're spelled rather than how natives say them, and it seems like a good way to ensure a strong listening skill. However, it isn't what I'm doing, so my progress isn't likely to map onto their system very easily.

Refold recently released a new video which has its own stages and hour estimates, which will likely be more accurate for me. 225 works out to be 1/4th of the way through their 2nd stage (which is very long), so it's still a significant number, and I've decided to keep using it as my near-future goalpost. I'll decide whether to keep using Dreaming Spanish's levels or switch to Refold's after I hit it, which will take at least 2 months, and more likely closer to 3. I have time to figure it out.

Goals till 225

My biggest goals for my current period of learning are:

  1. get into the habit of doing Russian for at least an hour a day, including Anki
  2. learn the most common 2k words
  3. be prepared to use super easy native material for freeflow video input
  4. be prepared to use kids/YA native texts intensively

Number 1 has more-or-less happened, though I'd still like to get more consistent on weekends.

Number 2 is the reason I'm going harder than I normally would on Anki, and decided to focus on reading four separate beginner readers. I want to have all the basic, top ~2k vocab down pat by then.

Number 3 is more abstract, but essentially, I'm hoping that my skills will be good enough for the likes of Peppa Pig come hour 225. Vocab will help with this, but so will continuing to immerse in comprehensible input every day, including repeating videos as necessary to understand. I hope to be done with Comprehensible Russian's Beginner 2 playlist and In Russian From Afar's A2 playlist at minimum, and hopefully be into B1 videos.

Number 4 is similar. I tried reading a short story aimed at young kids in Lute a few days ago, and it was frustratingly hard, with several sentences having more unknown words than known, and one sentence I could not figure out at all. I'm hoping another few months of Anki and the intensive reading of learner materials and Donald Duck will make reading such texts more bearable.

Changes After 225

My focus will continue to be on growing my vocabulary, though I want to rely more on intensive reading than on Anki. The idea of beginning to use native-level material, besides Donald Duck, is also very motivating.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!