russian langblr/studyblr

24 ✨ learning russian

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Здравствуйте! My name is Kira, I'm 24 years old, and I decided to start a langblr/studyblr to document my language learning process as I study Russian for the next year. My hope is that it'll help me get organized, enforce good study habits, and cement the content I learn into my brain as I explain and summarize it in posts. And if I somehow help someone else on this site learn Russian too, even better!

Let's go on this journey together! До свидания!

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Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and all endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

[nymusings]

What to do when you didn't get the score you expected

Sometimes you score lower than you thought you would, or you studied relentlessly and still ended up with a pass but not as high a pass as you thought you deserved.

Remind yourself that there's always next time

Tests often measure performance, not competence; you likely know more than the test says you do

All in all -- relax! Don't let it get to you. Grab a cup of tea or coffee and remind yourself that this is an opportunity to look your weakness in the eye and grow

Take the feedback into consideration. Where were you lacking?

Re-evaluate your study methods. What wasn't working? What did you miss? How can you account for that next time?

Properly hydrate and properly nourish yourself (and brain).

Do practice questions

Alternatively: make practice questions for later

Also alternatively: Make a blank copy of the test to sit again in a few weeks' time

Remember the forgetting curve. Interrupt forgetting

(I find this particularly useful when deciding what to study on what day)

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Well! I had a good weekend, and I had a good day in class today. Until the very end of it when I got caught up in my negative feels about being in SA. I could type up a whole thing about it, but 1) I know I'd just get misinterpreted the way I always do when I try to tell people how I feel about class, and 2) we'd be here for hours lol.

All I'll say is, I'm tired of feeling stupid when I know I'm not.

[catchymemes]

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I am so not amused with this stupid course right now.

[knitballl]

My sister's cat Kira who likes to read

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Week 24 Overview

Ohhh boy have I been neglecting this blog, lol. To be fair it does get a little redundant having every single weekly overview be like “my plans for this weekend are to get ahead on next week’s homework and do independent studying on my own time!” 

Anyway, here’s a little overview for Week 24, AKA my official halfway point in this 48-week long course: 

Life is still pretty great here aside from some academic setbacks. Class break was two weeks ago and it was WONDERFUL to take a break from school and spend time with my family (though I did have to do a lot of studying while I was at home). I still have an extreme enthusiasm for learning the language halfway through the course, which many are saying is unusual but very good in this institute. If only that enthusiasm would guarantee great grades again, though. 

All I want is to get back to the point I was at in the beginning of this course, where I was at the top of the class and learned and absorbed things very quickly. I think I still have a knack for learning the language, the problem is that my knack moves just a liiiiiittle too slow for the pace of this course, and it’s caused me to lag behind a good deal. I’m no stranger to getting bad grades and lagging behind in school, but since this is something I really care about, it’s been getting to me more than other things have in the past. And in general, I don’t like feeling stupid. I actually have a reeeeeaaaally big thing about being seen as stupid. Like. It’s actually really bad and has caused some problems for me in the past. Not that anyone here has intentionally implied that I’m stupid, but the feeling is still there. I actually had to (politely) ask the teachers to not bring up my struggling too much-- promising them that I have a handle on it and am doing everything I can in my own time to try to get back to where I once was-- for the sake of my sanity, because it was getting to the point where being treated like I was stupid by the teachers was stressing me out waaaaaaaay more than my actual academic situation. They responded well and so far it’s been a lot better.

All in all: Life is good. Very busy and sometimes overwhelming, but good. Even on my worst days, I’ve still really enjoyed living and studying here. The academics are fun and engaging, and I genuinely enjoy doing some studying to pass the time (though I admit I long for the day I can just come home and not worry about homework again). And the routined lifestyle of the military has done some good for me, I think. So yeah, it’s nice. 

There’s a lot more I could say but I think I’ll leave it here for now. I can’t believe I’m halfway through. Half of me is excited to be done (I just want to spend a weekend drawing or writing or something instead of spending the whole time getting ahead on homework!!!), but the other half wants to stay... half out of love for the place, and half out of fear. The way some of the careerists in my class talk sometimes has me fearing that I’m gonna spend the next three and a half years of my life in the Army after DLI completely miserable. And I know three and a half years isn’t THAT long, but the thought really gets to me sometimes. Oh well, that’s a vent post for another day, and it’s not something I can control anyway. So I’m gonna end this post right now without saying anything more! Goodbye!!! 

[german-enthusiast]

I think non-Germans might not be aware of this because there's rarely a way to naturally stumble upon it but

GERMAN IS INSANELY REPRESENTED ON WIKIPEDIA

I rarely see wiki entries (that aren't hyperspecific to a country or culture) that don't have a German page! In fact:

["Number of German articles on Wikipedia by 2023 (... in) June there were 2.8 Million German articles on Wikipedia. This places the German wikipedia on the third place of the ranking, whcih is lead by the English version with around 6.7 Million articles."]

41% of the English Wikipedia exists in German! This is a literal goldmine of content!!

Read about your interests! Look up your favorite celebrities! Read summaries of books, movies, mythologies, whatever your heart desires!!!!

Want to read but don't know what to search for? The homepage of the German Wikipedia (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptseite) is updated everyday with - an article of the day - on this day in the past - in the news - recently deceased - did you know? for you to peruse. And of course, the German version has a "random article" function too! It's called "Zufälliger Artikel" or "Zufällige Seite" and can be found on the left side of the screen (laptop) and in the popup menu on the left side (mobile)!

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Week 20 Overview

Week 20 was a great week!!! I don't know why exactly. I just felt a lot more on track than I have been in recent weeks. It was also only four days and one of those days was an immersion trip, so that probably contributed some.

One especially good thing from this week: I started going to seventh hour tutoring, which has already helped a fair amount and will definitely help more in the long term the more I go to it.

And the week after this coming week is my class break!!! I'm flying back home for a week and spending time with my family! So excited.

I don't have much else to say. Still getting homework and studying done. Nothing really changes.

Here's hoping Week 21 goes well!

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Week 19 Overview

Just realized I forgot to make an overview post for the last two weeks :( To be fair, though, not much has really been changing on a week-to-week basis. 

This weekend is a four day weekend and I am SO HAPPY especially because we weren’t assigned an obscene amount of homework like the past few long weekends. I got almost all of my homework done already and only have one short thing left to do. So the rest of my plans for this weekend just include getting ahead on next week’s homework, studying stuff we already covered, learning the next lesson’s vocabulary, etc. Not to mention non-school stuff like working on personal projects, and just relaxing. It’d be nice to go out and explore the city a bit but I don’t have a car so it’d be a little inconvenient. I could walk, if I find myself not minding walking up so many hills one day. 

I’ve been a little frustrated lately, though, because I study a LOT and really give my all, but I’ve been slowly falling more and more behind. And that honestly wouldn’t bother me too much-- I’m no stranger to falling behind in things-- if it weren’t for the fact that my teachers have been treating me differently for it. I understand being disappointed seeing a student who was once on the top falling more behind, but it feels like they think I’m being this way on purpose. That I’m slacking off and not making any effort to get back to where I once was. Which could not be further from the truth. But such is life, I guess. People keep telling me it doesn’t matter what others think of me as long as I know that I’m doing my best, but it’d be nice if the same people who told me that would try and see that I am, in fact, doing my best. 

Oh well, I don’t want to waste too much time here when I could be studying. Happy weekend! 

[maeve-studies]

• 6.10.2023 •

Sunny summer days 🤍 Now that I’ve graduated and finished taking classes, I really have no idea what to do with my time! I’ve been reading and writing a lot but sometimes I really miss academia and studying. Has anyone else been in the same boat?

[shamebats]

Romanticizing studying/education

While I am not currently enrolled in college, something I found incredibly helpful when it came to studying and taking notes was fully romanticizing it. And by that I mean going all the way in— I would put on a classical music playlist and set my LEDs to a warm orange tone and pretend I was a young scholar in ye olden days studying by candlelight, and a couple hours later I’d have half a notebook filled with color-coded notes. Another time I put on some film noir jazz and rain ambience and imagined I was a tired, grizzled detective working tirelessly on a cold case that just wasn’t making sense. And sure enough, I would have pages upon pages of notes and work completed by the end of the night. It sounds really silly but I shocked myself with how well it worked, and I wanted to share my experience with it in case it can help anyone else!

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Week 16 Overview

Hello, happy Friday! Today was a good week. I really got back on track from last week, and since there’s a three-day weekend this weekend I hope to get even more ahead for Week 17. 

Good stuff from this week: 

We switched up our class sections (which isn’t necessarily a good thing because I really liked my old section) but my new section is also very good, and I’m still sitting next to my battle bestie as of right now, so that’s good. 

Got an 81 and an 87 on the Reading and Listening Mid-Mod 4 exams, but the teacher did say she graded us suuuper leniently on that, lol. 

Went to this monthly little resiliency meeting thing on Wednesday and I had a good time! My understanding is that people in this little club can get the chance to present a speech of sorts on a topic of choice that relates in some way to fostering a better student environment. I enjoy public speaking so I’ll probably keep going to these meetings and eventually prepare a presentation of my own. 

In general it was a pretty smooth week. Definitely better than the academic trainwreck that was last week. 

Bad stuff from this week: 

Brooo so my class used to talk a lot about how we had a really great teaching team. Which we did. But I think the reason it was such a good teaching team was because there were three teachers in particular carrying the whole thing. And now two of those teachers are gone! One got a new job and the other was involuntarily moved to teach another class. She said she really protested the decision but there was nothing she could do. So now there’s really only one teacher in our whole team who I look forward to having. The others are alright, but to be honest I just don’t like the classroom environment any of them create. But whatever, just have to deal. 

Started feeling a little lonely this week. The resiliency club meeting thing helped, but that’s only once a month so it’s not like I can go to it again soon. But something good is that I recognized very early on that I was feeling a little lonely, and I made sure to not let myself spiral like I normally would have done in college. I just acknowledged the feeling and made sure it didn’t drive any big decisions. Eighteen year old me could never. 

Plans for the weekend: 

Memorize all the new vocabulary I can

Maybe take a few hours one day to a quick review of past content

Do as much of next week’s homework as I can.

I also really want to do something creative on the side again! I just broke out the ol’ drawing tablet and started drawing a comic I’ve been drafting in my mind/on paper. I’ve also been thinking about animatics to make, and stuff to write, and songs on the piano to learn, etc etc etc. There’s so much I want to create but I don’t have any time!

That’s it for Week 16, then. I think this puts me at one third of the way through. Although I now know that my graduation date is February 1, which makes this whole thing 52 weeks total, but I guess those 52 weeks are counting the couple weeks after we DLPT and wrap things up. I don’t know. If the course up until the DLPT is 48 weeks, then I’m officially one third of the way through. 

Happy Friday, enjoy the three-day! 

[haxyr3]

If this is relatable to you, check my new book The Quick Guide to Russian Verbal Prefixes.

[exactlyclearpost]

𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲 𝐝𝐚𝐲 😮‍💨

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Week 15 Overview

Hi! This week was interesting. It was very rough overall because I hadn’t had the chance to study over the weekend like I normally do, but it ended on somewhat of a high note because we took a vocab quiz yesterday that I think I did well enough on. 

Some bad news for me-- two of the best teachers on my teaching team are leaving soon. Everyone in my class is so sad.

Anyway, my plans for the weekend are so all over the place that I can’t even make a list of them. I need to study for sure, but not anything huge in particular as this week I’ve just picked up bits and pieces of the stuff I didn’t get to study last weekend, and I’m now at an okay-but-not-great level with all of it. As for non school stuff: I need to do a lot of chores I also didn’t get to do this past weekend. And lastly, I think I need to dedicate a lot of time to just relaxing and vibing by myself, since last weekend was so crazy. 

But if you’re wondering about last weekend, it was a lot of fun. Some of my family and friends came to visit me and it was great seeing them. 

Anyway, that’s it for 15. 16 better be reeeeeaaaally good lol. This week really was stressful.