what are your ways for building vocab?
I'm interested in finding different ideas for broadening your vocab.
How many words per day do you take on? Of course it depends on your memorization ability, but is there somewhat of a consensus? I've been told to tackle two words a day. My point being, should you stick with just a couple of words at a time so that they become memorized, or should you go for a bit more at a time, 5-10 or so, so that they just become familiar and over time memorized?
What techniques do you use? Flash cards, associations with pictures, associations with common words in your native language, common groups of words at a time, etc...
Sorry for these broad questions. I've never studied a language before, plus I've been out of school for a few years, so i don't really have any technique that i remember. I'm sure that you who have studied one or more languages have some pretty reliable techniques that worked for you that I might be able to try out to see what works best for myself.. ..
I would just like help from those who like to give it :) Thanks..
Jeff
Learning Russian techniques
On my last trip to Russia I bought some childrens comic's, the dialogue is simple and straightforward, and being cartoon comics if you don't understand a particular word you can usually guess it correctly from the cartoon caption.
I also use a language CD which is very good.
Recently I started using the BBCRUSSIAN.com website, whatever your interests are you will likley find a news article of particular interest you, when you click on the particular link of course you want to 'read' the story, the incentive is already there to translate and learn at the same time. If you want to cross check switch to the 'English' version of the same article. Have fun :)
What are your ways for building vocab?
Each time I come across a new word - one I feel is commonly used (that Akhmatova suggestion is good) - I write it on a (small) flash card in the context of the sentence so that I connect the word up with something i.e. for 'to drive' I would write 'to drive a car'. I learn no more than 30 new words per week. I go over the words at least once per day over the week then put them away. I keep revolving the bundles of words round & introducing one new bundle each week. Eventually I can discard a lot of them (and I do that a lot now) because over time the words have stuck or they simply come up all the time when I am reading. Some whizz kids might find this painfully slow but it's steady & there's no scary lists. And I keep the bundles everywhere - my backpack, my discman holder - all you need is a minute to look at them. People will think you're nuts but they're probably not learning Russian :wink:
What are your ways for building vocab?
Yep, I found using the flashcards has really helped me to absorb the vocabularly much more quickly. They can be jumbled up and I think you're less likely to peek than if you are reading from a list. Good for numbers too. There are some really good suggestions cropping up here. Reading a book in Russian alongside the English version is a good idea. As we know learning a language is necessarily tedious in parts so where you can jig it to fit into your lifestyle then you are less likely to give up. That's what I think.....
What are your ways for building vocab?
Scotcher, my compliments to your wife, I admire her style.... :wink:
Vocab building at university
I looked into studying Russian at university (Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands), and was interested in the speed of building vocabulary as well.
Now they have an explicit goal of teaching their students 1000 words in the first semester, and another 1500 in the second one. Both semesters, language learning proper takes 50 % of a student's time. So if spread over an entire year, first-year students of a BA in Russian are supposed to learn less than 10 words a day!