Learning Russian. Week 2

I've reached the end of Week 2 of my Russian language learning, so time for a quick update.

I'm still using Lingq as my main resource for learning Russian, as the Russian materials for beginners on the site are excellent. They may well be excellent for intermediates and above. I've no idea as yet, and no way to judge.

I am almost exclusively listening to and reading this content, and am spending about three quarters of an hour a day on this.

I also try to listen while I am doing other things which don't require much concentration, maybe when I am walking, shopping, cooking, feeding the dog and so on.

Reading the above through makes me seem organised and decisive, but the reality is the opposite. My learning times and strategy have been disorganised and random, but there we are and here we go and so on.

I sometimes think it is a miracle that I every achieve anything, but I digress.

Writing 'stuff' down'

Speaking and comprehension are very different skills. One of my big mistakes with trying to learn Polish was not making enough effort to memorise basic vocabulary from the start.

I decided to focus on this with Russian from the beginning.

I bought a notebook, in which I write the phrases and sentences that I want to remember.

I know many people use various apps and so on, but the very act of writing helps me to remember things. I'm also not a big fan of formal spaced repition systems, although I know they work very well for some people. (I've added a basic spaced repitition system for the sentences on Surface Languages).

My learning style is too random to use these systems effectively, but I can browse through a notebook, which is also probably better on the eyes, and the battery doesn't run out.

Anyway, I have this notebook with basic vocabulary, all in sentences, which I can leaf through as and when.

The language within is all basic, containing words, phrases and sentences that I will be likely or almost certain to use when I start to speak.

Russian grammar

Russian grammar is complicated, but you need to master it to be able speak correctly, and yet it can feel overwhelming.

I'm approaching this in two ways.

Firstly, I'm where possible learning phrases which are complete in themselves, so I don't need to worry about the construction used.

For example, I've learnt the phrase пять лет назад 'five years ago' which I can use on its own. I'm fairly sure, that there is some complex Russian grammar relating to numbers and years, but it doesn't matter. I know that the phrase is correct.

Secondly, I try to understand the Russian grammar relating to sentences that I learn. I'm trying to understand rather then learn the grammar, which is much easier and quicker.

For example, the sentence Мне нравится изучать языки 'I like to study languages' uses the constuction Мне нравится which translate literally as 'it is liking to me'. 'To me' is an indirect object and used in the dative case. The subject or thing being liked is in the nominative case.

I don't know how to form the Russian dative case, but whenever I see this construction I now know it is being used, which will help me recognise the dative case in the future.

So I am learning grammar, but not learning grammar at the same time.

It feels like a sophisticatedly lazy approach.

Peace,

Moonface.