I am learning Russian

I bought this book in February, when I saw it in дом книги, the House of Books (Singer’s) . It’s Barron’s 501 Russian verbs (Amazon link) I use it almost every day now, to check verb conjugations and aspects. I’ve yet to find a verb I need which is not in the book – I guess I am still at that stage where I need the most common verbs!

I haven’t counted to see if there really ARE 501 verbs, but there are a hundred at the end in a separate section  ‘Verbs for the 21st Century’, so I might be getting a hundred extra free! That section is particularly interesting because so many of them are recognisable with their Latin roots and almost all of them end in овать or ировать.

Of the original 501, you get the imperfective and the perfective aspects, the full conjugations, plus some useful phrases. I find the book useful as a quick reference, especially for checking the forms of certain persons and it is much quicker to look up verbs I don’t know in this book –which only has verbs – as opposed to my Big Dictionary which has a lot other words in too 🙂

The book also has exercises to practise the verbs. They start with simple exercises and get gradually harder. There are also some wordsearches if you get tired of finding the endings, and a couple of ‘Fun with idioms’ activities as wel.

I also like the paper! It is quite thin and promotes itself as “printed on partially recyledd paper”. There are 686 numbered pages in the book (plus xxvi in the introduction) and I really get the feeling I am leafing through a major tome of knowledge and wisdom, of which it is a privilege to be a part.

однажды, One Day, I might just know more than a handful of the verbs in this book. One day, однажды..

Way back in October I blogged about some of the materials I was using, including a Redkalinka audio book 25 Texts in Easy Russian. I finished the 25 texts last week and thoroughly recommend them. (And no, as I keep saying, I have no affiliation with the company. ) I can see my progress over the six months because when I first started with them I was doing one a week, struggling to understand them and the pronunciation. I remember taking forever to pronounce путешествовать and преподаватель, but by the end I was completing one every couple of days and finding it easy to recall the passages. I have used them  like this:

• Listen to the passage a couple of times to ensure I know what it means, comparing with the English
• Listen to each sentence, stop the audio and repeat. This takes three or four goes
• Attempt to say the whole passage by reading the Russian. This also takes three or four goes
• Cover the Russian and attempt to say the passage in Russian by only looking at the English on the right. This can work because by the time I have got to this stage, I almost know the passage off by heard anyway.

Each text is short and focused, with a storyline running through. I enjoyed learning about Anton and his Russian lessons and his finally obtaining a job in Moscow. I also enjoyed learning about  his sister Anna and her completing university and getting an IT job. (Good for her!) So when I had finished the book I was delighted to discover Anton’s story continues in Book 2 of the 25 texts with him getting off the plane in Moscow to start his new life  – so I bought it! Skimming through it, I see there is a new character, Olga but no mention of Anna. I wonder if Olga is going to make a connection with Anton or if I am just wishful thinking? We’ll see!

 

 

 

My time at UCLAN in the Russian Beginners’ course has come to an end now, with the remaining class taken up by the exam which “real” students will be taking next week but which I and other “members of the public” are banned from. Never mind – it was a fun six months and I look forward to joining again in autumn for the next level up. I don’t know where my Russian will be by then as I plan to continue the private Skype lessons, but it has been a pleasure and educational experience going to university each week and learning with other people.

In addition to the classes and conversation class, I’ve attended some of the Russian society events, one of which took place last Wednesday. The advanced class – made up mostly it seems of Latvians and Lithuanians! – performed extracts from a Fedot fairytale by Filatov (You can see him performing this himself here on Youtube) However, two of us in the  beginners’ class got given (very) minor parts at the last minute the previous week, so we got to participate too! I was a servant who had two lines to say – which apparently are in archaic Russian, so my son’s colleague’s grandma said. You can see literally just my two lines here  spoken by the two identically dressed guys in the corner:

Sean, on the other hand, was given the part of the English ambassador which involved acting as if he didn’t understand anything and just agreed three times to whatever was said with “yes”. He played it perfectly!

There was also a lovely presentation about Malenitsa, followed by pancakes with a variety of fillings including cottage cheese which, apparently, is a “thing” there.

It was a lovely experience and one I look forward to repeating next academic year when the classes and societies begin again.

Here it is: The Russian grammar channel, on Youtube. It’s great. No, I don’t know the author, Dr Curtis Forde (although it feels like it, after watching so many videos) and nobody has asked me to review it. But as both a former languages teacher AND a prolific Youtuber (in my job), I feel somewhat qualified to give it the thumbs up. Here’s why:

The channel advertises itself as “what you need to know about Russian grammar – one step at a time”  and – like the old UK TV advert – it does exactly what it says on the tin. Don’t come here if you want flashy animations, songs, gimmicks (although there is a rather convoluted story about Jacques, the tsar and some shrimps..). DO come here if you want to have a complex point of grammar explained to you in simple sentences in a few minute, with no thrills. Well, except the thrill of the penny dropping at the end, which to me is thrill enough.

If you look at the whole set of videos, you see that the title page is a very simple background with the subject of the video in large black letters, making it easy to see what it is about. I will quite often scroll through them, pick one that looks interesting and watch it. When you start to watch a video you will  notice that it is nothing but a black background, with white text and the guy speaking over it. But it works!!! Most videos are around the three minute mark, the perfect length for our modern day concentration spans. And it is quite an achievement to be able to say what you need in such a short time. Believe me; I know.  I love how, at the end, he has a ‘summing up’ section which recaps the previous couple of minutes. Of course, this is simply good pedagogy, what all good teachers would do – but it doesn’t follow that all videos will do this.

I also like the occasional series of videos, where a complicated topic is split up into shorter parts making them easier to digest. You watch the first one and feel you are part way there, even though you’re not done yet. The Motion verbs series is one example.

The fact that they are short means they perfectly suit today’s nano-learning, sound-bytes, just in time teaching -whatever you want to call that aspect of modern life where we slot in focused learning in five minutes here and there, from our mobiles, on the train… That’s not to say they don’t merit revisiting, I have certainly watched some of the videos more than once until they stuck in my brain, but again, that is a benefit of their short length, that it is no inconvenience to do so.

Summing up…

(See what I did there? )

• The Russian grammar channel is an excellent example of the art of précis: clear, simple diction, highlighting what is necessary and without extraneous entertainment
• The Russian grammar channel is an excellent example of how to make good video tutorials – one single topic, short in length, articulate narration, no unnecessary animations.
• The Russian grammar channel is in no way connected to me at all – I just felt it needed due praise from someone who appreciates what goes into it.

 

So this is the start of Phase 2! Weekly private lessons (along with everything else) I’ve made a timetable so I know which bits I am doing each day.

Just before our Skype lesson, Lilia sent me the textbook to download as a PDF. It’s a custom one, so I can’t share it, although it makes me smile because it is so remiscent of the GCSE text books I used for years. The lesson we did yesterday was about Cinema, TV and Theatre. How often have I done that in French and German? 🙂 There are accompanying audio files too, available online.

Oddly enough, for someone well used to online meetings, I was quite nervous for this first time -perhaps because I felt the distance across the internet would hinder my understanding? It was of course easier face to face, despite the online connection being very good. We both had our webcams on and she directed me to look at certain pages of the book and we went through the exercises together. Only occasionally did I struggle with the sound through her microphone, but on the whole the Skype lesson was excellent and I felt much less anxious by the end. I think I was also nervous in case I had forgotten everything we had done a couple of weeks ago in St Petersburg – and I didn’t want to make a bad impression! I want to be a good student!

Again the lesson was 98% in Russian and again it was tiring but extremely rewarding. Yet this time, I was much more aware of how much I don’t know, rather than how far I have come. Instead of being happy that I could understand and communicate for an hour and a half entirely in Russian, including correctly identifying and declining accusative nouns and adjectives, my mind kept going to the things I can’t say -the declensions and conjugations I can’t recall. I’m starting to see how big a job this is, learning a language to a degree of competency. In fact, I felt somewhat discouraged.

But maybe seeing the BIG picture is  a positive sign, rather than a discouraging one. ‘The more you know, the more you realise you don’t know’. Maybe I’ve reached a level of understanding where I know what I need to know, even if I don’t yet know it – and while that might be daunting, at least it means I know what lies ahead 🙂

In my other life, I loiter on the outskirts of a geeky, developery community where the term ‘in anger’ always amuses me. It has nothing to do with being annoyed, but refers to doing something for real, rather than just playing at it. For example, you use a Moodle plugin ‘in anger’ instead of just experimenting with it on your test site.

The time is approaching where I need to think about learning Russian ‘in anger’ – upping  the pace a bit, and thinking about my future intentions. I’m nearing the end of the Oxford Take off in  Russian book (link to previous blog) which has formed the basis of my daily practice, along with a variety of exercises from the useful Red Kalinka site and, of course, my daily dose of Duolingo.

The other day I did some sample GCSE Russian listening and reading papers – just out of curiosity. I got 46 out of 50 on the Listening and 42 out of 50 on the Reading. (In fact, I was surprised at the slow speed of the listening, contrasted with the Oxford Talk Russian CD) While that was encouraing, there is no way I would reach an acceptable level in speaking or writing yet – although it made me realise it is achievable. But do I want to achieve it? What purpose would it serve other than being able to say I had a GCSE in Russian?

Alternatively there are the Test of Russian as a Foreign Language (TORFL) exams. My son already has one and is currently working towards the third level exam. I could try the Basic level – but again – is there any point?

I don’t need to be certified to be motivated to learn; the pleasure of being able to communicate is enough for me. As for upping my pace, I start on Monday with weekly private lessons via Skype with Lilya, whom I met in St Petersburg. These will supplement the face to face lessons (which are fun and involve real human contact 🙂 ) and I hope will help me move on from the Take off in Russian book. Which will get a full review shortly!

 

I’ve never actually had private language lessons: I learned at school, at university and home on my own or in lengthy stays in the countries. So it was a new and fascinating experience to have a real life Russian Russian teacher all to myself for an hour and a half each time for three days during my stay. She is Lilia and I got to her via my son who takes advanced lessons from her via Vivalinguaplus . When I went into her room to start my first lesson -feeling excited but also a bit nervous – she started to speak to me in Russian to gauge my level and I realised that, because she was speaking slowly using simple words and cognates – cognates RULE!! – I could understand almost all she said. And so – bar a couple of times when she had to use an English term – our three lessons (total private tuition time 4 and a half hours) took place entirely in Russian. And I had her all to myself! According to my duolingo app I now “know 875 words in Russian”. I suspect I might know a few more – so imagine I know 1000 – that gave me a thousand words to reply to her and try to make myself understood to her during that time as we went through various exercises. I know I got verb and adjective endings wrong – but I also know the confidence of at least trying and being  understood – and then understanding her replies was so gratifying.

Not sure what to focus on for our three lessons, Lilia followed my son’s suggestion of studying the Russian verbs of motion. Here was the first example of how, if you know other languages, you can build on that understanding when you learn a new one. In English we say I go (on foot) or I go (by bus/ car etc) So we happily use “to go” for any means of getting from A to B. In German they make the difference between “gehen” to go on foot and “fahren” to use transport. They do this in Russian too, so I had an advantage of having encountered this concept already. THEN Lilia hit me with a new concept – and told me this is the case not only in Russian but in other slavic languages too. ( I love to learn stuff like that!) In Russian etc they also make the difference between going in one direction and going there and back – going once and going repeatedly. So there is a whole list of verbs to learn depending on if you are going once on foot somewhere or going on the plane somewhere with the intention of coming back  – or not!

These lessons me two of the key aspects important for progressing in a language: repetition and retrieval. We drilled and drilled these verbs and if I had questions or simply wanted to make a remark I had to generate the words myself (from my 875+ vocabulary) Brilliant.

But it wasn’t just the one to one tuition that enchanted me. Lilia is a linguistics graduate. She speaks some English but has understanding of the roots and structures of language, of etymology and differences in concepts. I had a great time making connections across the language tree, trying to use adjectives and nouns with the correct case and gender (although I confess at times I made random guesses to see what might happen!) and basically loving being with a like minded person.

So – are private lessons The Future? I’m back in “Peter” as they call it in April and June and if she is free I will certainly book more with Lilia. She does Skype lessons – I am interested to find out more about how these can work. Interested because, even though I use web conferencing tools all the time, I am not sure how you can do more than the conversation aspect via Skype. Do we both need a text book?  How can she mark my homework? Would she do screen-sharing? Would I? All to discover 🙂

…is not to panic when you don’t understand every word.

(OK so there is more than one key, but this is still a very important one!)

As a languages teacher training  lower set GCSE pupils for the listening test, I would tell them to listen out for key words that would help them build up a general understanding of the situation. I had personal experience of this myself today, as I am back in St Petersburg visiting my son. It’s minus 18 and beautifully sunny:

And today I was left to my own devices while my son was at work. So at lunchtime I took myself into a cafe and tried out my cafe-Russian phrases. First lesson: they do actually say the stuff you learn in text books, but it might sometimes be surrounded with other words you won’t understand. That’s OK 🙂

I decided to play it safe and order something I could actually pronounce as this was my first time ever alone in Russian  in a cafe. I ordered tomato soup and coffee (Americano – multinational!) with milk. Then the waitress asked me something I didn’t quite catch ,but amongst the words I heard – молоко , горячее and холодное which I know mean respectively milk, hot and cold – so assuming she wanted to know how I wanted my  milk, I opted for холодное (cold) and – guess what? I got what I ordered!

Encouraged by this, I went back in the evening to order dinner. Consolidation of learning! I’d been practising in my head for weeks how to ask for a glass of house white -and then I learned from my son how to get another one: you simply use the Russian for “repeat please”. But last night I discovered that if you say ноль пять (zero five) you can get a half litre carafe. Well, who wouldn’t?

It’s still baby steps, as they say, and I confess for my main course and dessert I ordered Italian food, making the process easier somewhat. But that’s ok too. Baby steps are how we learned our own language, and we got there in the end.

I mentioned in an earlier post about individual tuition. Well I have now completed three one to one sessions with a lovely teacher, Lilia, who is my son’s advanced tutor. It has been a fascinating experience and the subject of my next blog post. Once the ноль пять has worn off 🙂

It’s just over four months since I started this blog about learning Russian? How have things progressed? What have been the satisfactions and the frustrations? Where would I like to be after another four months?

I discovered very quickly that simply learning phrases, “holiday Russian” didn’t suit me. I was  always trying to deconstruct the sentences and wasn’t prepared simpy to accept that, for example the word for book is книга but if you read a book it becomes книгу. So my main satisfaction has been persevering with cases so I have some understanding and also so -sometimes – I can formulate my own sentences correctly without having to refer to a table and without randomly guessing. In this respect the biggest boon has been without question the RedKalinka Moodle course I blogged about previously It presents me with hundreds of quizzes on vocabulary, verbs, cases at basic and intermediate level and it is the repeated practice with these which is making them finally start to sink in. I’ve been aiming to do two or three quizzes a day – and often that means redoing them several times until I get 100%. It’s simply hard work, but the reward will be worth it.

Another pleasure has been learning together, in the weekly Russian classes at UCLAN. I even joined the Russian society and attended a screening of The Irony of Fate, a cult comedy film they all watch religiously every New Year. (A bit like Morecambe and Wise or the Great Escape!) When you’re in a mixed ability class, the teacher always has a balancing act to do ensuring everyone has sufficient talk time and practice time, and one area I would like to do better in is in conversation:

My frustration is that I have nobody to talk to at length (not that I can talk at length!) but for more than just thirty second bursts. On the CEFR scale I am barely at A1, but we all have to start somewhere I think if I could have regular conversation practice or be able to ask individual questions, I’d move along more quickly. This became apparent over Christmas when I forced my son to give me some private time – and it’s encouraged me to book some private lessons when I go to St Petersburg in a couple of weeks’ time. I’m having three sessions with VivaLinguaPlus, the company which gives (very) advanced Russian lessons to my son and I am looking forward to their intensity very much 🙂

 

In November I wrote about how research says it’s retrieval more than repetition that helps consolidate our learning. That said, it’s still very valuable when learning a language to do ‘drilling’ exercises that help embed into your brain certain patterns. I’ve been trying to memorise case endings. Using the ‘look, cover, write, check’ method helps somewhat, but it is putting them into real contexts that rather than learning them as an isolated list that aids  progess the most. This is where Moodle quizzes really shine: when created well, they offer regular drilling practice to supplement other teaching by presenting the case endings in meaningful sentences. I’ve been working through the RedKalinka Moodle quizzes (blog here) and am starting to really feel the benefit. I am determined to get 100% on each quiz  but this sometimes involved repeated attempts until I get them all correct. And that act of repetition is embedding the structures. Dative case anyone? I wasn’t so good at twenty past nine, but half an hour later, I was much more confident 🙂

There are no shiny, sparkly, gamified aspects to these quizzes: no hidden treasure,tokens,  XP points or badges (although seeing the progress block go from red to green is quite motivating.) But the satisfaction in finally getting that 100% does it for me. I’m off to try another one……