[Dirkus]

(11-03-2017 08:21 AM)bucky Wrote:  

(11-03-2017 03:37 AM)Dirkus Wrote:  

^Russian Accelerator. It destroys Pimsleur. But hey .. this argument is mental masturbation for the most part. The fact is the deciding factor on whether you’ll learn the language or not won’t be whether you use one system or another - it will be your staying power and willingness to show up day after after day after day until such time it’s a part of you. You’ve clearly proven you’re in that category bucky - so no matter what avenue you took you’d still learn it simply cause you have that staying power.

How fast were you able to get to a basic conversational level with Russian Accelerator? By basic conversational I mean able to introduce yourself, ask directions, order things in restaurants, do a simple approach with a receptive girl, and understand most of what native speakers said to you in reply. I find that getting to that basic level in a foreign language is the hardest thing, and I still strongly doubt there's anything better for that than Pimsleur. Once you're at that basic level you just keep working at it every day and you get proficient in the language eventually (usually takes a year or so for me, depending on the difficultly of the language).

I've only spent 10 days in Ukraine before and purely met with English speaking girls (at that time I could barely say anything) so pretty much zero experience with natives.

Basically I consider learning this language something perhaps equivalent to what a 3 year University / College degree would be in terms of amount of work required to get to "reasonable fluency" (probably at the level you're at). So let's say 6 semesters in total or 1000-1200 hours. To that end, I would say I'm just about to enter second semester. Probably not quite ready to get much value out of native conversation, but not far off.

Like you said, I think getting to the "basic" level you describe is the hardest part - and perhaps the hardest part of any new endeavour, the first let's say 200-300 hours of learning. Because let's be honest, there's nothing really "fun" about that. You're in the trenches, you're grinding, you feel like nothing makes sense, you're like a child again and it seems maybe it'll never click. That's where most will give up. But I think being comfortable with the confusion is the point, you're always going to be encountering the unfamiliar anyway, the key is just continuing to show up. I'd certainly say that for when I first started learning piano and reading music. After putting in that initial leg work okay now you can start to really enjoy the process, start "playing" with the language. That's when the learning process becomes easier, cause now you feel like you're starting to actually understand some things and progress is happening in a linear fashion.

To be honest, Russian Accelerator has been the difference for me - he's actually (Mark, the instructor) a pretty cool guy, having spent a lot of time in Russia and Ukraine and knows on the ground what kind of things a foreigner should expect and encounter. And when I look at him, and I look at his wife (you see pictures of them through the course as he explains concepts) .. I'd say he's done well. So perhaps he's a living testament to the value of learning the language.

[crudeloyalist]

I've never understood why pimsleur gets so much praise. It's by far the most frustrating language learning material I've ever used. It claims that after 3 months you'll be able to hold down basic conversations. This just isn't true. The course doesn't cover enough to be anywhere near comprehensive. For 30 minutes a day for 3 months, the return on investment is poor.

[ElFlaco]

(11-03-2017 03:42 PM)crudeloyalist Wrote:  

I've never understood why pimsleur gets so much praise. It's by far the most frustrating language learning material I've ever used. It claims that after 3 months you'll be able to hold down basic conversations. This just isn't true. The course doesn't cover enough to be anywhere near comprehensive. For 30 minutes a day for 3 months, the return on investment is poor.

Talking to real people is necessary for getting to get to any kind of conversational competence. People say/ask unexpected things, respond to what you say, respond to (or ask about) something in the immediate environment, and so on. Also, conversations demand real-time responses. Apps and text messages give you a moment to think what to say and how to say it. That's not the kind of pressure you have to deal with in real communication.

This is why language hacking materials don't work. They can't take you to the point where you can talk with a real person (unless that person is just smiling/nodding and making massive concessions/simplifications due your lack of ability = not a real conversation).

Exception: somebody who already understands how languages work; or is learning a closely-related language.

[bucky]

(11-03-2017 03:42 PM)crudeloyalist Wrote:  

I've never understood why pimsleur gets so much praise. It's by far the most frustrating language learning material I've ever used. It claims that after 3 months you'll be able to hold down basic conversations. This just isn't true. The course doesn't cover enough to be anywhere near comprehensive. For 30 minutes a day for 3 months, the return on investment is poor.

Strange. Maybe it's more adapted to my learning style or something like that, because I could do just that after three months of Pimsleur, hold down basic conversations. Introduce myself, order things in restaurants, do basic approaches with girls who were giving IOIs, and so on. I'd say my ability with the language almost doubled in the first week or so because I was able to learn a lot of new words and "plug them in" to the mental grammatical and pronunciation infrastructure Pimsleur had given me.

Are you sure you followed the instructions and didn't skip days? As I was telling someone above, I've found that pretty much everyone who hates Pimsleur skipped days, and I agree that it would be useless if you do that or try to combine it with some other course. To be honest, I usually did each daily lesson twice to make sure I really had it down, which the instructions recommend. Maybe that was the difference. I was VERY serious about learning Russian so I wanted to do anything I could to be conversational on day one in Ukraine.

Another thing, it is a beginner course. If you're already past beginner level, Pimsleur isn't for you. I wonder if that's the case with Beirut, the Pimsleur hater I was debating above. He mentioned other materials he's used so maybe he was already past beginner level with those materials when he tried Pimsleur.

Anyway, I guess final word is that, as Beirut said, whatever course or strategy you choose the most important thing is to stick with it and not give up.

[crudeloyalist]

^ I followed the instructions as best as I could. Some of the lessons were so difficult I had to repeat them multiple times and even then couldn't get over the required 80% to move on to the next. On some days I'd spend an hour or 2 on the same lesson. I did end up skipping days out of sheer frustration but would make up for it by going back a few lessons to revise. It took me almost 5 months to complete.

When I did finally arrive in Russia, I was just about able to say some very basic things. I could introduce myself and ask for directions but struggled greatly to buy train tickets, order food at restaurants and open girls. Girls seemed very receptive to me opening them but unless their english was beyond a basic level I couldn't maintain the interaction.

I guess everyone is suited to different learning styles. I've had better success with Assimil.

[bucky]

(11-06-2017 04:34 PM)crudeloyalist Wrote:  

^ I followed the instructions as best as I could. Some of the lessons were so difficult I had to repeat them multiple times and even then couldn't get over the required 80% to move on to the next. On some days I'd spend an hour or 2 on the same lesson. I did end up skipping days out of sheer frustration but would make up for it by going back a few lessons to revise. It took me almost 5 months to complete.

When I did finally arrive in Russia, I was just about able to say some very basic things. I could introduce myself and ask for directions but struggled greatly to buy train tickets, order food at restaurants and open girls. Girls seemed very receptive to me opening them but unless their english was beyond a basic level I couldn't maintain the interaction.

I guess everyone is suited to different learning styles. I've had better success with Assimil.

Sounds like you really put in some effort, so I'm not criticizing you or trying to AMOG you or anything, and I appreciate your honesty in admitting that you skipped days and took five months to finish. Still, both of those amount to not following the instructions. Did you ever get to the point that you were conversational in Russian? If so, what methods did you use?

Maybe it is a learning style thing. I never did a Pimsleur lesson more than twice in one day. If I recall correctly (it was a long time ago) the instructions say to repeat the lesson the next day if you don't feel you've mastered it. Seems like I did repeat a few lessons here and there, but I never skipped days.

Two caveats: I did have a pretty good knowledge of Latin going into Pimsleur, which may have helped (Latin grammar is very similar to Russian grammar). For example, I remember specifically thinking "OK, now it's teaching me the genetive case" at one point. Also, with the Ukrainian girl who worked in the hotel, it was one of those instant attraction at first glance things on both sides so it was much easier to work through the language barrier than it would be with a cold approach were the girl hasn't made up her mind about you.

[Arado]

For anyone who is at an intermediate/advanced level, netflix allows you to search for movies and tv shows by audio. The selection is far richer in French, Japanese, Spanish, etc, but there are a few Russian shows and some American movies and shows dubbed into Russian that can help you. It gives you a bit more control over the subtitles than youtube. Probably appropriate once you have a solid foundation in the language and are conversational.

[firezombie]

A comment and some general tips

1. Bucky, 100% agree on using "Roots of the Russian Language". It's so helpful to deconstruct new words. It makes them easier to remember and less intimidating (since many Russian words can get quite large). I haven't seen anybody else mention it, so maybe it's a peculiarity of someone like you or me. I find it important in any language, native included.

2. For long term usage, I would suggest devoting more vocabulary practice towards verbs. Focusing on nouns is great for short term usage because they are often the anchor of a sentence, and are thus essential to being understood by native speaker that's trying to decipher what you mean. Likewise, hearing a native speaker mention some noun can be a clue to you. However, the usage of many nouns is determined by context and since many nouns are physical items, they are easy to point at for clarity. Therefore, if you don't know a noun being used in a sentence, you can figure out. But if you do not know a verb... then you are in trouble. If you know the noun and not the verb... there are many different actions that a verb can mean. Good luck figuring that out in context.

Focusing on verbs over nouns might disable you in the beginning, but if you plan on surpassing Tarzan speak, a large vocabulary of verbs is an important tool that will allow you to comprehend most of a sentence without getting flustered by unfamiliar nouns.

3. You can also use the auxiliary verb hack from Tim Ferriss described at the bottom of this page: http://brazigzag.com/language/timothy-fe...uage-fast/

4. The best way to use apps like Anki/Memrise/etc is to find a word frequency list and learn the "1000 most common Russian words". And then you can add vocabulary that is personally relevant to you by writing a very detailed account of what you do each day and how you spend your time. You can look around your room and ask yourself "do I know what that is in Russian?".

[Gopnik]

Those are some good points @firezombie

In addition, I'd say it's important to understand how different words (nouns, adjectives, adverbs...) can be derived from verbs (and viceversa):

Отрицать = to negate, to deny

Отрицательный = negative

Отрицательно = negatively

Отрицание = negation (by the way, these type of neuter-gender nouns derived from verbs are super common in Russian)

Отрицательность = negativity (these type of soft sign ending feminine nouns are also very common particularly abstract nouns for emotions, feelings and abstract concepts e.g. любовь, справедливость)

Отрицатель = skeptic, doubter, someone who negates or rejects a concept or idea (the -атель
ending denotes a person that does an action)

As you can see, from knowing a single word, you can derive many others, which makes for a very efficient and natural way of improving your vocabulary (this applies for just about all verbs).

[bucky]

That was actually a pretty good example of the types of lists you're likely to see in The Roots of the Russian Language.