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Thread: New Kid on the Block

  1. #21
    Moderator Lampada's Avatar
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    Не забудьте "Берегись автомобиля"!
    http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewtop ... %E9#186444
    "...Важно, чтобы форум оставался местом, объединяющим людей, для которых интересны русский язык и культура. ..." - MasterАdmin (из переписки)



  2. #22
    Moderator Lampada's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jjjiimm
    This is what helps me:

    1) Talking to Russian ...
    2) Watching Russian movies, TV shows, listening to Russian radio, and reading Russian books. ...
    3) Attending a Slavic church. ...
    4) Studying a Grammar course book, ...
    5) Песни, песни, песни ...
    Например, отсюда:
    http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewforum.php?f=7
    http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewtopic.php?t=5535
    "...Важно, чтобы форум оставался местом, объединяющим людей, для которых интересны русский язык и культура. ..." - MasterАdmin (из переписки)



  3. #23
    Увлечённый спикер jjjiimm's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lampada
    Не забудьте "Берегись автомобиля"!
    http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewtop ... %E9#186444
    I'll have to watch that, thank you for the wonderful resource as well as the writings!

    Oh my goodness. Yes... Myagkov. I feel silly now! Anyway, the guy's got a lot of charm and he's so great in these movies. You can even find him in Ironiya Sudbiy-2, but I'd rather not know that film existed. It kind of... tainted the original film and tried to leech off of its cult-status. Not to mention, in my mind.. Zhenya and Nadya end up together in the end and get married.

  4. #24
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    Wow! Many good responses from the sweet folks here at the board. I will take all this advice and use it well - my first stop a trip to Barnes and Nobles as soon as I get another job. I recently quit my previous one and so for the moment my only resource is the internet! Gotta watch my spending.
    Ba-dum tish.

  5. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by jjjiimm
    You can even find him in Ironiya Sudbiy-2
    A heinous product. A big advertisement of BeeLine, Calve, Nokia and so on. An idiotic plot and direction, a bad performance (including Myagkov). I saw this thing and I hate it.
    In Russian, all nationalities and their corresponding languages start with a lower-case letter.

  6. #26
    Увлечённый спикер jjjiimm's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Coup
    Wow! Many good responses from the sweet folks here at the board. I will take all this advice and use it well - my first stop a trip to Barnes and Nobles as soon as I get another job. I recently quit my previous one and so for the moment my only resource is the internet! Gotta watch my spending.
    The Penguin course should only set you back around $12. But you'll see a lot of resources there. I have a workbook, and it's great for practice.

    The most Russian I ever learned was when I worked with the Russians here (Delta Junction, Alaska). I was totally immersed in conversation between them, plus listening to some Russian music, so the words just stuck when I learned them. I hope you got broadband internet, because Skype is an awesome tool to find Russian-speaking penpals you can talk to over microphone. I found one guy who lived in Odessa, Ukraine that knew English very well and was very enthusiastic about helping me with my Russian.

  7. #27
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    If only $12 is at stake, then I shall pursue this with great haste!

    I thank you once more for your help and courteousy.
    Ba-dum tish.

  8. #28
    Увлечённый спикер jjjiimm's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Coup
    If only $12 is at stake, then I shall pursue this with great haste!

    I thank you once more for your help and courteousy.
    Пожалуйста. The only complaint I have on the Penguin course is that there is no CD or any audio help - it's all written in the book. Still.. with movies, radio, books, TV, etc.. it should be no problem.

  9. #29
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    I hope it's as easy as everyone says. I really look forward to being able to carry on conversations in Russian with other speakers!
    Ba-dum tish.

  10. #30
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    If you want a decent online learning source, go to www.russnet.org , sign up for free, and start the Business Russian course.

    If you use any sort of textbook, I highly recommend writing as much as you can. Get yourself a notebook, copy out all the examples, write out the answers to the exercises, practice writing your cyrillic letters--that probably should have come first .

    Memorizing is important. It will probably come easier with an audio source of some kind. I find it nearly impossible to memorize words printed on a page. From another thread here I decided to pick up the Vocabulearn Audio tapes. They are terrific, and I got them for $5 plus shipping on half.com. Costs a little more if you need them on CD. They are strictly vocabulary (no grammar at all), but they do help with listening and speaking practice.

    The more different angles you approach it from, the better you will learn. Once you decide you are interested in learning, you'll start to notice lots of opportunities to work on it.

  11. #31
    Подающий надежды оратор
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ramil
    If you want to learn the difficult language, try Japanese or Estonian instead :lol2:
    あ! 日本語は見掛けほど難しくありません。:)

    Japanese writing may take longer to learn than the Russian alphabet, but nouns and verbs in Japanese do not have different cases or genders, nor do they conjugate to match the subject of the sentence. So I think in this respect, Japanese is easier than Russian...
    お前の無礼はこっちの第三言語の学

  12. #32
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    Back to your original question, Pimsleur has its problems, but also merits.

    IF ALL the conditions below apply:

    1) you find it for... very cheap :P , or money is not a problem
    2) you have plenty of time to devote to it, and it comes EXACTLY in half an hour chunks (or one, one and a half, two,...) every now and then, when you can listen to it and be ready to speak and pronounce too
    3) you are too lazy to start a REAL studying like in school, but want some friendly voice to guide you and help you be active without you even noticing/thinking, but still being active by trying to remember words and pronouncing them often when prompted. You don't have to devise "memorization techniques" or any learning methods, the speaker does everything for you; you have to just pay attention and try to remember the asked words/phrases;

    then Pimsleur is for you.

    Its advantages:
    - you learn to pronounce
    - what you learn really sticks
    - you learn the "mechanisms" of the language, even some of the basic grammar becomes second nature to you - and it sticks.
    - you learn some every day dialogue.
    - it is easy, provided you pay attention. Everything is repeated to death, in multiple lessons.

    Its drawbacks:
    - you learn very little vocabulary. Especially the 2. and 3. courses teach no more than about 5 new words a lesson - that makes for less than 500 words total
    - it is not time effective. If you are devoted to studying Russian and learning more in less time, then Pimsleur is not for you. If instead you are ready to spend at least 60 hours (including some lessons repeated twice) at a leisurely studying pace, then it is good for you.
    - while they stress "learn as a child: they first learn to speak, only after to read and write", you are not a child. Learning by a textbook is much more effective - and you'll have to learn written Russian anyway, sooner or later.
    - they on purpose avoid explicit grammar explanations. You have to "grasp" it by their examples - again, like children. But sometimes it is much more effective to learn it by reading a grammar rule in a textbook than by devising a cumbersome example.

    So, I wouldn't be so negative towards Pimsleur - as I confess it helped me more than I expected. But then, it suited me perfectly. I suggest you, if you want to use it, to supplement it with a more traditional textbook - both to learn to read and write, and to get that basic grammar which makes Pimsleur so much easier to use. Besides, every time you meet a word or construct in two different methods, you learn it much better.

    The Princeton course is available for free and comes with PLENTY of audio - which is always good. Another free resource is the Sazov (?) textbook, but without audio. You'll find links in this forum. If your French or Italian or Spanish (?) is good, and you find it, many people, me included, swear by Assimil (but Assimil Russian for English speakers doesn't exist). And it is not legally free.

    For sure, I prefer Pimsleur to Rosetta Stone. I am trying it for fun, but it is more of a game than a useful resource. With Pimsleur you actively learn the words and sentences, RS instead is more of guessing the correct words - and I see they don't stick with me, at least not actively. It's much easier to recognize (or guess) a written word when you have a few choices, than to actively learn to use that word.

    Some people swear by Michel Thomas, but I hate the concept (and the Russian teacher's voice). Practically it is nothing more than a live recording of lessons with one (sure, good and experienced) teacher and two beginning students.

    If you prefer "unorthodox" and challenging methods, you could try the Listening-Reading method outlined in the
    How to learn any language forums. It requires you to find/create a parallel text (Russian - English) of an interesting for you novel AND its audio version in Russian. Then with multiple steps (reading in English to know what's it about; listening and reading in Russian to associate spoken and written language; listening in Russian and reading in both languages; etc.) you should start to grasp an intuitive feel for the language, without trying to learn every word. Doing it multiple times with a long book, you should eventually learn the language well - at least that author's language. But check in that forum for precise methods and success (or failure) stories.
    Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
    Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.

  13. #33
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    That's quite a way to put it Leushka. I thank you for your input and your sources! I'm about to snag the Penguin guide from Barns n' Nobles, but I'll also look into the references you've provided. I've been running Tech Support on my computer the last couple of days so I haven't had much time to access my computer. Now that it's all working I can get back to learning!

    I plan on taking a Russian courses in my graduate studies, since I need at least two semesters of foreign language to complete my degree. All over it!

    Thanks again!
    Ba-dum tish.

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