~ 120 hours, and grammar plans
Today I'll do a quick update for the past week then elaborate on my plans for explicit grammar study, which, as mentioned last week, I plan to fit in after 225 hours, if possible.
~ 120 hours
So little has happened in the past week it's hardly worth talking about.
I had a strong end to July, studying over an hour every day, hitting 2.5 hours on the 31st. However, late on August 1st, I got sick, and I spent most of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in bed, either asleep or binging Youtube. My Russian fell in a ditch. I kept up with Anki, and watched some untrackable stuff on Youtube in the form of video game lets plays, but did nothing else. Even though I've felt better the past couple of days, I was behind in schoolwork and housework, so I've been stressed and busy working on those instead of Russian. I should finally get my hour in today, though.
Still, I have a couple small positive updates:
- I reached 1000 cards in Anki. 🎉 Furthermore, I think I've hit a plateau in terms of cards due for review each day. For a while it was increasing slightly every day, but I hit a peak of 160-something cards due a few days ago, and they've been less than that every day since.
- In the days before I got sick, I created and put into motion a reading plan to move through my beginner readers with audio. I'll be reading 1/4th of each book before moving on to the next one, working through them in a cycle until I've finished all four books. Should take about two months at a quick pace, 3 months if I go slower.
Explicit grammar study
I'm the kind of language nerd that reads Wikipedia entries about grammar in their free time, so I plan on doing more explicit grammar study than Refold recommends. I have vague plans of starting this at around the 225 hour mark, but will put it off in favor of getting in time with other activities. It may be good fodder for something to do during the downtime at work besides making these posts way too long.
I've already picked up the books I want to use for this: the first two volumes of the Russian through Propaganda series. It's meant as a college-level course, with each of the books representing a semester of study, but is also well suited for self-study, with answers in the back of the book, a relatively low price for textbooks, and online support material.*
I've read the first couple chapters already, and really appreciate the author's writing style, comprehensive coverage of Russian grammar, topic organization, and exhaustive use of interesting real-life examples from 20th century propaganda.
However, I don't plan on using it as the author intends, memorizing its vocabulary and grammar patterns and doing all the exercises. Instead, I'll just be reading it front to back like a normal book, taking particular care to carefully read the real-life examples he uses from 20th century propaganda. The idea is to become aware of grammatical features so I have the opportunity to recognize them in immersion, and to get some theoretical background in the language for my own personal satisfaction.
I'm not sure whether to track this, as using it basically goes against the method, and I want my stats to be useful for other Refolders. On one hand, it is focused time with the language that will almost certainly be helpful. It would be inaccurate if I presented a time at the end of my project that did not include it, making it seem like I spent less time on learning than I did to achieve whatever level I reached. On the other hand, it's not immersion, and not the most efficient or productive use of time, and if I include it, my hours may seem inflated compared to other learners at a similar skill level.
Either choice seems like it'd make my stats less comparable to other learners', and thus less useful to the community. I may split the difference and track half the time, but I'm open to others' opinions, and I have a few months still in which to figure it out.
(*The online material consists of free worksheets and video lectures created by the author for each chapter, which you can access at the link to the textbook above. I probably won't spend much time with these, but wanted to mention them as it's an impressive amount of work, and they're likely a good resource for anyone wanting to learn Russian in a more traditional way, or for simply getting audio for the textbook examples and vocab.)