Learning Russian. Week 1

It is the seventh of October, and I began learning Russian seven days ago.

I've been working through some excellent Russian lessons for beginners on LingQ and written by Evgueny, and I've also been wondering about when I should find a Russian teacher on iTalki. (My initial plan was after six weeks of study).

The lessons created by Evgueny are excellent, and there are a lot of them. I've been listening to them whenever I can, while pottering, walking and so on.

They are written in Cyrillic, and I'm following along while I listen, rather than actively trying to learn the cyrillic pronunciation.

Listening and reproducing are two different beasts however, and starting from next week, I'm going to start learning selected phrases.

I'll pick phrases from these lessons (which are likely to be useful to me), and also from Surface languages Russian.

Over the following weeks, I'll also have the Sentences translated into Russian, which will be extremely useful.

To speak or not to speak

I am not by nature a reflective thinker. There are three parts to being a reflective thinker, and I've only nailed the first two.

A reflective thinker experiences something, thinks about it, and learns. I presume the 'reflective thinker' either then improves, or maybe makes a different set of mistakes when they undergo the same experience. Glass half full or empty. Your choice.

I tend to think about the experience, learn something, and fail to implement any improvements to (and here I am talking specifically) my learning strategies.

And so I am write about learning Russian (from week 1), partly because it is cathartic, and partly to avoid the above.

One of the things that I didn't do when learning Polish, was either arrange regular lessons using a site like italki or a regular conversation exchange.

I reasoned that as I didn't have enough language, there wouldn't be much point. So, reflecting on this (sigh), I think that I made a mistake in leaving it for too long before speaking.

Obviously, to become good at speaking, you have to speak a lot but at the beginning is it really worthwhile? You can't say more than 'hello' and you can't understand the replies. This doesn't make for a rewarding conversation. And, I don't live in Russia.

This is what I told myself, and very true it is to.

But ...

... with Polish I left it too long and didn't start chatting.

This was demotivating, and didn't force me to learn basic vocabulary and phrases actively. My passive vocabulary increased but never become active.

I need to strike the correct balance with Russian.

Peace,

Moonface.