For one year now I have been handwriting Russian in its simplest, printed form. At first, I was glad merely to have mastered the alphabet. Now I can hand write Russian (much faster than I can type on a Russian keyboard) but every time I diligently do my homework I feel as if I am a five year old child, laboriously pushing her pen into the paper, pen held in her fist, tongue between her teeth, and each letter looking different every time she writes it. That’s me! But if I am to take any of the higher level TORFL /TRKI Russian language exams, I really need to learn cursive (joined up!) writing. It is, however still much of a mystery to me. b looks like d,d looks like g, t looks like m – and m looks like m as well, which doesn’t help matters. But I need to Feel the Fear and write it anyway.
Our lovely language assistant from UCLAN last year (and next week I’m signing up to another year) gave us a children’s handwriting book which is great – and actually quite relaxing. I haven’t worked much in it though yet.
I also found a couple of helpful videos on Youtube where we simply watch the letters being written, upper and lower case. Here’s the first one of the two:
Unfortunately I realise that practising cursive writing is going to significantly increase the length of time I spend on my written homeworks (hours and hours already!) but – there’s nothing for it, if I want to master the skill.