I’m not sure about you, but sometimes I feel the compulsive (?) need to fully understand something that I’m learning/reading before I can move on. While this tenacity (?) is helpful in making sure that you fully comprehend a concept before progressing further, part of me feels like it’s not that helpful in foreign language learning.

Russian is the third foreign language that I’m learning and over the years, I’ve developed my own style of language learning. Which, may or may not work for someone else. But I truly do not believe in revising the same materials for language learning. I also do not believe in the need to know every single thing on that page / chapter before moving on.

Picking up a language is about exposing yourself to a wide range of materials. There’s no point in re-reading what you had learnt for “revision”. Your reading speed and parsing abilities increase when you find 10 articles to read, not reading the same article 10 times. (That’s an exaggeration, but the logic stands). Learning a language in the classroom could “trap” you in thinking that “revision” is important. It doesn’t help when you are faced with an upcoming exam that supposedly takes reference from a certain syllabus or a range of chapters from a book. It makes you feel that you (only) have to review a certain set of materials to score, and that it itself goes against the nature of language learning. And perhaps also learning in general.

Back to the question of when should we move on? Here’s what I practice:

1. There is no need to remember all the vocabulary that you learnt
2. Do not panic (or doubt yourself) when you don’t remember stuff, especially vocabulary you learnt in a list (i.e. no context)
3. You are not a dictionary, and you shouldn’t be able to function as one
4. Don’t remember a grammar point? Find more example sentences. Understand the concept. Don’t worry about “remembering”
5. Once you worked through the materials once, it’s time to move on
6. Don’t remember anything? Get another textbook/use another material and learn it all over again
7. There is no need for repeated learning using the same material

The Russian textbook that I’m using is quite good in teaching grammar, but there’s a conspicuous lack dialogues / passages and vocabulary is introduced in a list / as part of conjugation practice. sigh. I don’t remember much, but it doesn’t stop me from moving on.

And ordering more textbooks that should have dialogues / passages 😛

Ordered a couple of books on Gmarket and I can’t wait for them to arrive!!!

Am I the only one who gets sooo excited over adding a new keyboard to my phone / laptop?

After learning the alphabet, one of the first things I did was to install the Russian keyboard and starting to get myself familiarised with where the keys are. Easy for mobile phones, but slightly harder for my laptop. I open another tab, googled a “Russian Keyboard” image, and keep it there throughout the whole time to refer. The MacBook keyboard has a Russian phonetic keyboard, but I would suggest not to use it cos it doesn’t help you learn!

I don’t like to memorise keyboards too (LOL), so what I do is to keep searching up words using an online Russian dictionary. I’m using the 네이버 러시아어사전 but I’m sure you can find something that works for you. As I search, I will try to remember where are the key letters and try to form my own tricks for remembering the positions as I go along. e.g. I’ll think to myself [а] is “f”, [в] is next to “f”, [с] is at “c”, [л] and [д] looks quite similar and they are next to each other.

I find it so interesting that the basic textbooks for all languages I’ve learnt introduces words like table / chair / newspaper / book / stamp / map as the basic words. The first few are quite common items, but do we still use stamps / maps often? food for thought.

Learnt the simple structures of how to say “This is xx”, “is this xx”, “yes it is xx”, “no it is not xx” today.

Это стул? да, это стул.

Btw I had to google where to find comma / period on the Mac Russian keyboard because the original keys were used for the Russian letters LOL. Period is Shift + 7. Trying to get used to it.

Russian is indeed a fun language to learn.

Till the next post where I’m introduced to the world of GENDER in languages. xx

In March 2018, I wrote about my excitement of starting Russian and how I took up a 12-hour (6 lessons) pre-beginner class. Unfortunately, it was again a case of work/adulting > hobbies and I couldn’t keep up with the language. I left it aside with the intention of coming back to it again at some point in time, and didn’t manage to do so until… now 🙂

Something sparked that desire in me to pick up the language again. I love to associate language learning with going into a relationship. You never know when things will work out or not. It’s all about the fate.

And so what sparked that interest again? It’s actually a Chinese drama that I’m watching – 《独家记忆》(Somewhere only we know) on Netflix. As an aside, I’m very new to Netflix I feel like a noob 🙂 I still can’t decide if it’s worth my money cos I don’t watch much Hollywood/English shows. It’s one of those slice-of-life about growing up/ friendships / love and depicts the relationship between a third-year English major university student and a PhD Physics student who took up the role as a substitute teacher for a Russian elective. LOOOOL. Sorry I know this sounds dubious but hahaha please give it a watch. I really love it. I loved how the drama really incorporated quite a fair bit of Russian-related elements (such as the Russian classes) – if I’m a university student now I’m totally going to sign up for Russian classes next semester LOL. The male lead also put in quite a bit of effort in his role and he sounded so natural in speaking Russian (to my untrained ears). ♡♡♡ Totally fangirling over the show.

And that’s the reason why I am soooo excited over learning Russian again. You may think it’s quite a lame reason, but I feel that it’s such silly reasons that can carry us through the journey 🙂 I call it fate.

I hope to blog about this journey in more detail, cos it’s not everyday that I would start on a new language. I’m not trying to be a polyglot and at this point, I don’t have that much interest to learn many different languages. I hope that I’ll really be good in the ones I’ve picked and chosen 🙂

Through sharing more details of my study, I hope to help those who are brand new to the language (and not just Russian) to also start in their own journey and find the method that’s most suitable for themselves! ^^

Till the next post.