~ 180 hours, and I am, in fact, still alive
I realize that there's comedy in my last post being called "getting back on the train" and yet proceeding to only track an average of 10 hours per month for the following three months. The process has been not so much "getting back on the train" as "getting on the train only to fall off again between every station." But, well, I'm back on board again, for now, and it's been another thirty hours-- let's talk about it.
A word of warning: despite the rather limited progress I made these past three months, there's still a lot that's changed about my habits and activities since last time, so this entry will be rather long.
Anki
I've missed several days of Anki-- more like several weeks, actually. Even during the days I was on the train, so to speak, I avoided doing Anki because of the large backlog. Eventually I decided to turn the settings to 0 new cards per day and 50 reviews per day. Turning down the reviews was the only way I was going to get through my 600+ card backlog and not be miserable doing it.
The result is honestly not bad-- I am getting through those backlogged cards. Also, comparing my stats on the home page of this blog, I noticed a bunch of cards had moved from young to mature since September, which is very satisfying (my leech percentage also went up, which is annoying, but I'm choosing not to worry about that right now).
Once my reviews fall below 50/day, I'll raise my review count back to 9999 and start learning new cards again. This time, I'll only add 10 a day, if that.
Videos
I've watched much less on YouTube the past 3 months. I'm not going through specific playlists on Comprehensible Input channels like I used to, only occasionally clicking on specific videos that interest me. I've been drawn more recently towards Russian with Max, and still watch some In Russian From Afar as well.
Most of the content from Comprehensible Russian and Inhale Russian is too easy and slow to feel like a good use of time anymore, unfortunately. That said, I do want to point out that the former is now uploading new videos again (!), among which have included some intermediate content which feels closer to my level, and the latter is continuing to make videos at a rapid pace, which is great news for the community.
Instead of YouTube, I've been watching more content aimed at natives, mostly in the form of kids shows already I'm familiar with. Of all the shows I've tried, Peppa Pig, Blues Clues, and Little Einsteins are the most comprehensible, but they're also harder to get through as an adult compared to SpongeBob or Disney movies. My patience gets tested really quickly.
Peppa Pig is a special case because of the existance of this excellent website, which includes over 200 Peppa Pig episodes alongside transcripts. For the first 22 episodes, I worked through the transcripts in Lute before and/or after watching. However, I'm not sure going through these transcripts is the best use of my time with Lute, so I've started to just watch the shorts raw, and that has been fine. There's plenty enough context to pick up on what's going on, and understand some new words.
SpongeBob, however, is my favorite. It's definitely harder than Peppa Pig, but I'm able to follow along with the plot perfectly fine, and I find myself catching more words and sentences than I expected going in. Unfortunately, there aren't matching subs nor a transcript, with which I suspect it would work even better. Even with that limitation, however, it's currently my favorite video content, sitting in just the right spot between "easy enough to get something out of it" and "enjoyable enough to want to watch it."
Reading
Of the past 30 hours, the majority of it has been spent on intensive reading. I don't keep very good track of time for individual activities, but I'd be shocked if Anki took more than 2 hours in total, and watching videos more than 10, if that.
I've gone back to reading with Lute. I've bought a couple readers in EPUB rather than PDF format, so I can use Lute for something denser than video transcripts now and feels more valuable. I also have a handful of books that I take with me on my e-reader when I'm away.
I've stopped using Assimil for now. This is partly out of boredom with it, and partly because its format doesn't line up very well with my current reading habits (it cannot be read inside of Lute and is awkward to read on my e-reader). I do plan on going back to both editions to use them later on.
Off-Lute
The current highlights in my off-Lute reading are 101 Conversations in Easy Russian and Π£Π΄ΠΈΠ²ΠΈΡΠ΅Π»ΡΠΈΡΠ΅ ΠΈΡΡΠΎΡΠΈΠΈ: 116 ΡΠ΅ΠΊΡΡΠΎΠ² Π΄Π»Π° ΡΡΠ΅Π½ΠΈΡ, ΠΈΠ·ΡΡΠ΅Π½ΠΈΡ, ΠΈ ΡΠ°Π·Π²Π»Π΅ΡΠ΅Π½ΠΈΡ.
The former's name may not sound interesting, but there's actually a complete mystery story told across the book. All of the basic words it uses are known to me, which means I get to focus on the domain-specific vocabulary relating to mystery and crime (with words like "investigation", "eyewitness", "security guard", and so on), and enjoy the plot. It has some holes, but it's more interesting than most graded readers I've sampled. In addition, it's the only reader so far that consists of only one long story, which is interesting and a nice change of pace.
116 (as I've been calling it for short) is more difficult, but not by a lot. I only have to look up a few words per page, and most of the more unusual words are defined in the margins. I feel like the vocabulary level is around the same as 101, but the individual chapters are much longer and denser, with less repetition of specific words, much more non-dialogue prose, and some more difficult syntax and grammar that has forced me to slow down a few times even when knowing all the individual words.
What makes 116 stand out is, quite simply, that the stories are good. Even better than 101's mystery story and the Short Stories I will praise later. This is rare in graded readers and is highly appreciated. I suspect both the more difficult syntax/grammar and the high quality stories come from the fact that the 116 texts are adapted from real literature, rather than contrived to fit learning goals.
Lute
My main activity on Lute has been reading Short Stories in Russian for Beginners with its accompanying audio. It has the same author as 101, and the stories do feel similar in quality. They aren't outstanding by any measure, with some weird plot elements and holes, but they are again more interesting than Assimil or the handful of other readers I've tried (besides 116). Short Stories is more difficult in general than 101 and has more difficult vocabulary than 116, although the sentences are easier to parse grammatically than the latter and Lute makes looking up unknown words very easy, so the difference is more-or-less made up for.
I have also uploaded the first chapter of several native books for which I could find audio: The Hunger Games, 2001 A Space Odyssey, one of Enid Blyton's books, and The Martian. I've moved through the first page (200 words) of all of these besides Martian, all of them are too difficult to be efficient right now. It's doable, but in all three cases those 200 words took the same amount of time as a 900-1000-word Short Stories chapter, and with how many dictionary look-ups I was doing, I doubt many words will stick. Blyton was the most usable, but even then it was a bit of a slog.
My current vague plan for reading is to finish both volumes of Short Stories on Lute, 101 and 116 on my e-reader, and return to and finish both Assimils. Then perhaps I'll attempt Enid Blyton again and see how it goes.
Conclusion
Well, it has been a bad few months for my Russian. Still, I made some progress, and I have hope the next few months will go better. I feel like I'm finally getting to a place where content that is more inherently interesting is approachable. I can get some use out of fun cartoons and my current readers have been relative page-turners as well.
I can practically taste a theoretical next step where I'm able to intensively watch/read native videos with subtitles for adults or start working through a native children's book at a quicker pace than 30 minutes per page.
Maybe in another 50 hours? That would be just past the 225 hour mini-goal I set for myself all those months ago. In a future post, I'll be returning to that, as my goals have shifted somewhat since then. I've already made the transistion to using more reading than Anki for vocab growth, and shifted away from CI videos in favor of native cartoons like Peppa Pig, but reading native kids' stories still feels too difficult.