Hello all, I have been studying Russian for about 8 months. My goal is really to communicate with Russian friends and family I spend time with. I can read Russian but it's not my main interest. Here are the resources that I use the most.
- [2000 Russian Words in Context](https://www.audible.com/pd/2000-Russian-Words-Russian-Edition-Audiobook/B00HZ0F3HS). This is useful for me because I can play it for hours while I work. Sentences are in Russian then English, it reinforces vocabulary and I do think it has been useful. They are a bit robot-like but I think it is helpful.
- [Easy Russian Youtube Channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxvt-g7JsPNnEn8tUtZZBBg) I think this has been helpful for understanding Russian *as it is actually spoken*. I pay for the transcripts and go over phrases which are new to me, try to look at the grammar. Trying to figure out how tiny phrases like также, чем-либо, какие-то work in a sentence and change the meaning feels useful. When translated word for word these phrases are hard to understand for me so seeing them used in conversation feels like finding the missing piece.
- [Russian Podcast/Youtube Channel with Max](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCklUqFEcJqFnWKEBozw5p4g) This is probably the most comprehensible Russian podcast and Youtube channel I have found, though sometimes the length of the podcasts make it easy for me to tune out because I feel like I get the "gist" of it.
- Quizlet- I do a lot of vocabulary and I think this might be my strength, but I might start to use flash cards with full sentences instead of just one word at a time.
So here are my specific struggles-
*the more flexible word order. I know Russian does have some fixed word order but since it is more flexible than English I have a hard time following the direction of action. In conversations with speakers this happens VERY often that I think I know what they are talking about because I recognize most of the vocabulary but the final message of the conversation is totally lost on me. I can somewhat recognize cases but I do feel like it is not intuitive to me yet so maybe this is part of it
*I have just recently found a great conversation partner who is really patient in Russian, and any ideas on how to best use that time would be appreciated. Sometimes we do random questions back and forth on basic topics/icebreakers but any other ideas would be cool.
*Here is one big struggle- the family I spend the most time with, I am not comfortable yet really trying to talk because the corrections are so specific, it really takes the wind out of my sails. The one who corrects my grammar the most (which I definitely appreciate) used to teach Russian in Kazakhstan so I think she is teaching for students who are really above my level. I don't think I am going to 100% nail cases any time soon, I really just want to be understood and participate in conversation a bit.
Any suggestions on what to concentrate on, resources you could recommend ideas for activities to make interaction a little easier, would be really appreciated. Obviously the key here is quantity of listening, more content, more movies et cetera, but I do think I have a solid basis for at least getting across ideas and am having trouble taking the plunge in conversation. I have learned a couple of languages in my free time (french and spanish) to pretty good levels, but Russian is definitely so much slower, and I don't think the grammar is something I can just "pick up" like I did with the other two. I have put a lot of time into studying Russian and I really want to put it into use!
[link] [comments]
from Language Learning https://ift.tt/3ycgklX
via Learn Online English Speaking
Comments
Post a Comment