Already half a dozen hours into my Russian literary journey, I’m ready to report from my first virtual stop in Yaroslavl, the city where Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, went to school. Ura!
Listening and reading is no easy ride in the beginning: partly because I need to get used to processing Russian at the same speed as the narrator, and partly due to my embarrassing lack of vocabulary. Reading the English translation in advance is a big help here though, as it enables me to follow the plot with just the help of a few pointers here and there. Yet on the whole, I still feel a little lost: more like a mere speck, as seen from above, in a vast ocean of foreign words, bobbing up and down on the waves with Cyrillic flowing in and out of focus. I keep having to remind myself at this stage to keep the faith and not panic – it’s only very early days…
With limited resources at the moment, I’ve decided to try and get more out of each book by listening and reading twice through, once in tandem with English, and then just with the audiobook. Maybe I’ll quickly give up on this idea out of the frustration of having to repeat each story 3 times in all (especially in longer novels), but it’s worth seeing if the positive feeling that comes from understanding the text better on a successive reading outweighs the negatives.
So far I’ve gone through two waves of listening and reading with “The Little Prince”, and am already several chapters into “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. As predicted, I found “The Little Prince” a lot easier to understand the second time around (final reading score: 96%), which really lit up my day. The rest of the Russian Harry Potter collection is on its way from Grant and Cutler, so every time the letterbox rattles, my heart leaps in hopeful anticipation like a wee waking bairn on Christmas morn.
Today’s reading test results: 81% (+1%)
[first 100 words taken from “Дневной Дозор”, Часть третья, Глава 2, стр. 566)
Distance from the next station, Kirov: 574 km.
I like having a copy of the novel in question in the target language and a copy in English, that way I’ve got a contextual translation of everything, you don’t even need a dictionary (though I still find it helpful), you just read a paragraph or so in the target language, then look it up in the English version to sort out anything you didn’t understand, wash-rinse-repeat. I notice you’re using an audiobook as well…I personally would play a short bit, about a paragraph’s worth, and then go back and look at the English translation to see what they said, then rewind and play again until I’d learned it, maybe use the Russian version as well so that I can learn to read at the same time as I’m learning listening comprehension, but that’s me. I don’t mind initially slogging along at a snail’s pace if that’s what it takes to understand everything, I’m very patient and persistent.
Cheers,
Andrew
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You’re absolutely right about context, except this time I’m trying it the other way round. So far I’ve found that reading the English translation in advance gives me an initial framework, or “schema”, around which to build my comprehension whilst reading and listening to the Russian text. And much in agreement with Professor Arguelles, I find dictionaries become most useful at a more advanced stage in the learning process.
As I initially studied Russian intensively on a small piece-by-piece basis using the study-and-click method with Zamyatin’s “Мы”, I’m now ready to find out how much farther extensive studies will bring me. And just to recapitulate here, i) I read a chapter in English, and then ii) read and listen to the same chapter in Russian simultaneously. When I’ve gone through all the chapters in this way, iii) I read and listen to the whole book once again in Russian to consolidate what I’ve learned and hopefully chart some progress too. I’ve read success stories from others who have used a similar approach in the past, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the magic will happen for me too. 😉
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Yup, if you read Pete’s blog (Language Fixation–I see it over there in your blogroll) you’ll see that he essentially does something similar and that it’s simply a matter of volume before “the magic happens” as you put it and you can suddenly understand everything. I haven’t completely gone over to this method, then again I’m at a kind of advanced-intermediate stage with Spanish, but I have seriously increased my time that I spend just listening to Spanish and I really feel that it does help immensely.
Cheers,
Andrew
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Pete’s posts are great, and luckily for me, there are a whole bunch of inspiring language learners who have written posts over on HTLAL and succeeded to varying degrees using extensive listening and reading (Professor Arguelles, Atamagaii, Volte, M. Medialis, Adrean and Buttons (my most excellent teammates in the TAC challenge), Pete (aka Doviende), Ryan (aka Digithand), Sheetz, MarcoDiAngelo and Kubelek are just a few of the many names that come to mind right now). This gives me hope…even on the darker days with a tough nut like Russian (as long as I don’t crack first, of course)! 😉
Getting my listening skills up to scratch, especially when it comes to films and group conversation, is still a long way off for me. Even after building a more comfortable base in the language, there are many times whilst listening to Russian or watching a film when I can barely understand anything at all and it’s more like a jumble of mumbled sounds. At times like these, I feel like a complete dolt and wonder whether I’m getting anywhere at all. I wish I could get past this stage sooner rather than later (ahhh…my relentless search for the Polyglot’s Stone), but I guess it’s probably just a matter of time (and patience) and putting in lots of practice. Now that you’ve reached the next level, what did you find the most useful for honing your listening skills? Cheers, Teango.
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Actually, I would say right now Notes in Spanish, it’s just a Spanish podcast that you can get the transcript for (you have to pay for the transcript, called ‘worksheets’, the podcasts are free). I love being able to go through it (the transcript) and learn any words I don’t know, then listen to the podcast itself and try to catch everything, I usually require a few repetitions of the podcast itself before I can understand everything they say at full speed, without pausing and replaying, and without having to refer to the transcript.
I’d highly encourage you to try to find some Russian podcasts that are about 5-15 minutes in length that include a transcript (a translation is useful but not necessary), and if they’re specifically intended for people learning the language like Notes in Spanish is, that’s even better.
Cheers,
Andrew
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Thanks for the link, Andrew! I haven’t found anything quite the same in Russian yet, although A Taste of Russian probably comes close and Эхо Москвы of course has loads of material.
What would be amazing later on is something like a Russian version of Yabla. If you hear of anything like this in your travels, the cervezas will be on me… 😉
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I keep thinking I need to check out Yabla, it sounds fantastic but I honestly haven’t really check it out at all yet.
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HI. Just noticed you on the website 6wc.
Unable to find your blog pages to stop the “About Me”. Want to meet you.
Who are you? Where to live? What is your native language (UK / USA)? Why study languages? Travel?
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Thanks for dropping by…I plan to add an “About Me” section in the future. I’m currently back in the UK, after having spent a couple of years in Germany, and have been passionate about languages and language learning for longer than I can remember. I wish you all the best with your studies this year, and hope to see you in the next 6 Week Challenge! 🙂
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