Russian boost

I realized recently that my Russian needs a little boost. 

I'm happy with the alphabet. I've a ton of books for when I get to the intermediate level. However, I'm not happy (never have been) with the step-by-step approach of each and every 'how-to' guide. And to tell the truth, the stuff that I have is a little stodgy.

And so I did an online search to see what else I could find, and I came across some resources - Sherlock Holmes makes a reappearance! - prepared by Kristina Malidovskaya from Boost your Russian.

In line with my principle of using a number of various approaches, I believe that I'll follow some of her advice. I especially like the look of the simple news stories that I saw.

I'll explore Kristina's Youtube channel to start with. It's slick, certainly, but it appears natural too. It's bound to bring my Russian to life!

Memrise

There's a place for Memrise. For several languages, I need to become familiar with different alphabets and/or writing systems. And so for Greek, Korean, Russian, Hindi, Taiwanese, and Burmese, I've made a start on various courses.

I've also revived an English group I'd once started for my Level 2 English students. I'm inviting them to give it a go.

(For some reason, Memrise doesn't load on my old computer.)

Russian - 19 April

Somehow I have over 400 books in Russian in my Calibre library. A torrent in more ways than one! The book pictured is a dual language version (although the actual cover is different). 
James Baldwin's children's version was used as the source.

I started with Russian near the end of February, but recently I've downloaded an aid to the Russian alphabet. I'm also using Just listen 'n learn Russian as I want get a feel for how the language sounds. There's some crossover with both Greek and English.

What do you expect?

I expected, upon returning to New Zealand, that I would have less time to devote to my language activities because I would have classes to teach. And yet, I dearly looked forward to kicking off Arabic, Chinese, Maori, Norwegian and Russian. Five more languages to take my total to 15 (let's include English in the tally).

If I can spare a couple of hours per day (I thought), or two hours and twenty minutes, then that amounts to 10 minutes per language (this time excluding English; it will just have to manage).

I don't think that this will be a problem. Ten minutes ought to be enough, if my method is indeed as good as an hour of traditional study. It's easily six times as efficient, I believe.

Therefore, I'm looking at 365 days divided by 6 number of hours per language, or 61 hours. If I set my age of retirement as the conclusion of this experiment - which is two years from now - then I'm spending, say, 125 hours on each of my 14 languages.

It will be interesting to discover whether the whole thing is doable. Whether it doesn't lead to too much strain. And whether the languages help each other along, rather than slow each other's progress.

Russian for a reason

The Polish friend who I mentioned in an earlier post doesn't like English very much (even though it's the language that he and his Japanese wife are stuck with). He prefers Russian. Claims it's easier for Polish speakers to pick up.

Well, let's see about that. Let's give it a go. I'll put Russian on my list for that reason, and for the fact that I get to enjoy another alphabet.

Perhaps 2% is too much to claim for myself just yet. So I'll start off by trying to listen to a text while following along the page. I'll scan the language.

Perhaps next I'll collect a random set of impressive-sounding expressions. And then see where to go from there.

The ABCs of multi-lingual-ism

It happens to be the start of 2020 as I put pen to paper (well, it was). The time feels right to start a new blog. It's time for a New Year's resolution. It's time for a challenge. A language acquisition challenge.

Initially, I thought of setting a 365-day goal. But I feel that would be too gimmicky - it doesn't feel authentic. Plus, I have life that I'd like to live alongside of this project. Life-work balance and all that.

So I'll take it fairly easy. I've no problem with that - I've already opted to work only part time (0.6). And in a couple of years I'll be eligible to retire. All in all, I'm not going to turn this into a big deal. I wish to spend no more than a couple of hours per day on this exercise. In terms of language-learning, therefore, I'll see how I fare with just a few languages, not too many. I'll settle for an even dozen.

I've selected them according to the alphabet. They each start with a different letter, so that'll make it easier to name and keep track of them.

• A is for Arabic
• C is for Chinese
• D is for Dutch
• E is for English (which I don't count as one of the 12)
• F is for French
• G is for German
• H is for Hindi
• J is for Japanese
• M is for Maori
• N is for Norwegian
• P is for Polish
• R is for Russian
• and S will be for Spanish

I think that's a fair swag.