Thread: What is your Russian learning routine?

What's your daily schedule?
How long do spend learning Russian?
How do you learn new vocab?
How do you remember grammar?
How do you organise the stuff you learn? Folders/Exercise book ect
What resources do you use? Websites/Films/Radio ect
Who do you practice with?
What methods do you use? Flashcards/Posters ect

I would be very interested to know the answers to the following questions!

I try to keep my learning natural, which means I make no actual effort that looks and feels like learning. I am convinced that the human brain only really learns anything if it needs the information for real. Learning material is not for real. If there's going to be a test, then the brain learns for the test, not for life, for example. That may not be true for all brains, but it surely is for mine.

What's your daily schedule?

There is none. I have been learning Russian for almost three years, and I use it daily to chat and to write and read e-mails, read novels and that kind of thing. I have much more exposure to the written language than to the spoken version, and therefore have stronger weaknesses in talking and in listening comprehension.

How long do spend learning Russian?

My learning is more using, and I spend quite a considerable amount of time each day using Russian. I would guess that of my daily language usage, about 50% is my native German, 30% English and 20% Russian.

How do you learn new vocab?

When a word crops up which I don't know I look it up. When I want to say something which I don't know how to say, I look it up. I make no special effort to memorize any words, I look the same thing up a hundred times if necessary until it sticks. I find that it sticks much more easily if I get corrected or if someone explains a word to me in a real life context.

How do you remember grammar?

I read a couple of grammar books front to back in the beginning and refer to them when I find I need some information I don't know for sure. I also bought some special high-focus grammar books (colloquial language, particles, elisions) and read them, too. And I notice phenomena which turn up which I try to find out about and then I write articles about them for my blog.

How do you organise the stuff you learn? Folders/Exercise book ect

I don't. I'm a highly disorganized person. One could say that the articles I write for my blog are a way to organize information, after all I do look up things I remember I wrote about in my blog and am constantly puzzled by what I find there.

What resources do you use? Websites/Films/Radio ect

Mainly forums like this one and chat on odnoklassniki. Skype, too. E-Mail. Online and offline dictionaries and grammars. Novels. Sometimes Russian news on websites. Russian music. A resource I need to utilize more is my Russian neighbours. But it is still easier for them to talk to me in German than for me to talk to them in Russian.

Who do you practice with?

Friends on odnoklassniki and by e-mail, and sometimes in real-life, too.

What methods do you use? Flashcards/Posters ect

Only actual language usage.

Можете дать ссылку на свой блог, bitpicker? Мне трудно представить себе, что язык можно выучить без учебников.

Originally Posted by Marcus

... Мне трудно представить себе, что язык можно выучить без учебников.

Bitbicker said: "I read a couple of grammar books front to back in the beginning and refer to them when I find I need some information I don't know for sure. I also bought some special high-focus grammar books (colloquial language, particles, elisions) and read them, too." " Online and offline dictionaries and grammars."
А что ещё надо?

А что ещё надо?

Мне - учебник.

Everyone has their individual schedules, if has any. I like listening to language stuff when I walk, I very often carry a magazine on me (easy to fold, easy to take out). I use the 'hidden moments' (you might quickly read a magazine while standing in a queue in a bank). I especially like listening to stuff in winter as my hat covers the headphones, which is very convenient ))))

Originally Posted by Marcus

Можете дать ссылку на свой блог, bitpicker? Мне трудно представить себе, что язык можно выучить без учебников.

http://www.russian-online.net/russis...frs-wochenende

Но блог по-немецки...

I'm a disorganized person, too, extremely so; but I was afraid of spinning my wheels in the mud when I started learning, so what I do is adhere to a few rules that I actually kind of stole from a personal trainer I know:

1. (Obvious, but I): Do something everyday with the Russian language, even if the activity is inane, or seems like too little work to be study. (Ex: on lazy days where I don't want to work after work, and I just play video games - well I've modded most of them to show russian text. Ex2: I often can't stand to do any more studying (russian && science journals and things most would find dorky) I will free-write something fictional and childish to push the blood back into my right brain... =) Well, I have a steno pad, I write these things paragraph at a time, then translate what I wrote on the right column. (Usually the translation is laughable: I use words I've not seen before in Russian, but still I learn, and friends who speak Russian help me find errors and re-draft, and thus indirectly pump up my vocab.)

2. I seek out my weak spot everyday, like I would in a workout routine. I try to find the arena of the language I've not worked on, or one I'm struggling at, and I focus my day on that. Ex: when I found I had a poor understanding of <сам> and its 28 incarnations, I made flash cards (decl/meaning) and read them forward/backward throughout the day. Ex2: When I realized my aural cognition was poor, I D/L'd recordings of Russian news articles read at fast speed, and their respective transcripts, and listened to them one at a time, trying to mouth the sounds along with the speaker until I could keep up, and until my ears could tell where we were on the paper.

3. I attack myself (my ignorance?) from all angles. It's not uncommon for me to spend a morning listening to Russian talk radio in my headphones while I translate a paragraph of Russian and intermittently watch a sharedtalk chat room for living language examples.. When I've got enough material coming at me from all sides, it seems that my innate ability to ignore or tune out the unfamiliar fails, and the Russian language just pours in. Also, the more I minimize English I hear, and maximize RUS I hear in a day, the better I take to it when I sit down to study. NB: In response to Marcus' statement, here's where I find myself using textbooks, onlines resources and books on tape, and I agree it's harder to learn without their help. (I suppose it's *possible* to learn without a lexicon - but I like to know the rules of the game, so I"m more comfortable with one.)

4. I challenge, but never test, myself. Good or bad thing? I don't know; but it's important to me to keep the whole process fun. So I never frankly test myself; instead I try to see how I'm doing through interaction. I write a note on masterrussian.com, and if I speak RUS and nobody corrects me, I pat myself on the back. =) Or I'll try voice chat, or watching a movie or TV show in russian and check myself for comprehension afterwards.. This way I'm never discouraged by failure, but I can still check my level of skill, and keep the whole thing fun, as a hobby should be.

5. I change it up whenever there's an opportunity. If I've been doing something for awhile, and it doesn't feel new and interesting, I switch it up, try to find a different approach. Too many chat rooms - I switch to the books; too many news articles - I listen to talk radio or even russian dance radio or folk music.. Whatever incarnation refreshes my love for the language. That's what the motivator is for me.

I'm interested to hear how people study when they're more organized than I am. =)

Originally Posted by Marcus

Мне - учебник.

Но чем тебе "grammar books" или "special high-focus grammar books (colloquial language, particles, elisions)" не учебники?

Спасибо, битпикер!