3 posts tagged “learn russian”
I get a lot of practice listening to Russian while training for my 90 km ski race in Sweden. That race will take place in Mora Sweden on March 4. I was tricked into going into the race by my employees and our suppliers in Sweden. But I intend to complete the race. So I am taking a week to train at Silver Star. Here is what it looks like at Silver Star.
Here I am ready to start my 5 hour endurance training. There are tens of kilometres of trails, some flat, some hilly, with beautiful views.Can you notice my earphones connected to my iPod for listening to Russian?
If you need to go you need to go. Note the snow load on the toilet.
I stopped to look at the view. Note the trail below the one that I am on.
Some skiers in the distance. You hardly meet any other skiers. When you do you chat.
My hotel in the small village. Owned by a fellow from Switzerland who was chef in Hong Kong, and a man from Tibet. They are usually to be found in the bars of the village at night. How do I know that?
A view of the down hill ski area.
I find the poor quality of reading material for languages like Russian and Korean very annoying. What is equally annoying is the poor quality of language CDs. Inevitably when I start learning a language from scratch, as is the case with Russian or Korean, I depend on language programs that I can buy in the store or online. (The Linguist is not yet available for these languages.) What is most annoying is the amount English on these CDs. "Lesson 5" it says in English. Or "The next episode is about Sally and Igor going to the Post Office, see if you can understand what they are saying." Or: "Try to answer the following questions after listening to the episode". Why the English? Let me figure it out. I want to listen to these texts 20 times to get used to the language. I do not want to listen to English. What better way to get used to numbers (always very difficult in any language) than to hear them in the language I am trying to learn. Why not just say "Chapter 34 on page 245" in Russian or Korean! Why not!!!! What goes through the minds of the people who make these recordings? Is my reaction so different from other learners?
You need to learn English before you start to speak in English! I have been working on my Russian over the holidays. I am fighting my way through Bulgakov's "The Life of Monsieur de Moliere" reading, listening and saving words and phrases using the Beta version of The Linguist. There are a lot of new words. Many of them are identified by The Linguist system as low frequency words but I am still trying to learn them. At the same time I am reviewing older, easy content, listening to it, and repeating phrases while I listen. I still do not speak Russian with anyone and have no real desire to do so. I guess I would summarize my philosophy as follows; until I can read and listen to a novel, news programs and recorded conversations in Russian and enjoy doing so, I have no desire to speak with anyone. I might be extreme but I feel there is so much I can on my own to improve in the language, I am not sure that stumbling around in a conversation at this stage in my learning would really help me. I think the same is true for English learning. Maybe I am being unfair. It is true that I do not need to learn Russian, nor to speak it. As learners of English you may have a greater need to produce language output at an earlier stage. You should still spend most of your time on reading, listening, word and phrase review, and imitating and repeating phrases; in other words activities that you can control. You need to do two things; become more in tune with the language, and learn words and phrases. This comes from input activities. When you can enjoy listening to and reading novels and news report, the speaking will come naturally.
I look forward to hearing your views!
