21
votes
Advice for learning a language?
@Khromier, @Soulmaster and I are trying to learn Russian. It's the first time we've (I've?) properly tried learning a language.
I was wondering if any of you had advice to offer for learning a new language, even if it isn't necessarily specific to Russian.
We've been using https://russianlessons.net so far, but other resources would be interesting.
Спасибо!
Спасибо огромное!
This is very well written (and helpful! A difficult combination, I find)! I'll definitely be trying these out in the future. Much appreciated.
Good luck with the poetry, friend.
Quality, quality reply. Thank you.
My #1 go to method for getting started in learning is to find music in your target language that you like. Listen to it a bunch wherever you are. Find lyrics online, sing them to yourself. sing it in the shower. sing it at work. on the train. sing it again and again until youve got the words down, regardless of if you can understand a single one of them, regardless of if your pronunciation is miles off. Get used to the way it feels to have the language in your mouth, and once you eventually learn what some of those words mean, you'll have some other context to attach that meaning to.
Step 2: Speak it. Start where everyone else starts. Babble. Make a fool of yourself. Every single person who has spoken any human language does at some point, most just get to when they're kids & are less self-conscious about failure (big unaccounted-for factor in those "kids are 10000billionX better at language learning" studies is that it's cute when kids mess up, and everyone assumes that if they mess up as an adult they'll be laughed out of the country).
If your situation makes it so you 100000% can't find anyone who knows your target language nearby/can't afford to travel somewhere to find ppl (even diaspora) - the internet's got a bunch of good stuff too, i can personally vouch for at least some folx on italki (paid lessons, usually reasonably priced but varies by language). There's lots more (i haven't used) on HelloTalk and here https://www.lifewire.com/free-language-exchange-websites-1357059
and last must-do: SRS (the surgery and/or Spaced-Repitition-Software). It's basically fancy flashcards which measure how well you remember each card, and puts the card back into the deck at different points so that if you did well, you won't see it as often, but if you misremembered it'll be more common. I use Anki (android/web free ios paid) and Memrise (freemium). Duolingo has it's own flashcard app TinyCards, but last i checked it didn't have significant community support in building robust decks, but that's always susceptible to change!
also if you're looking for Russian music, check out Kino & Nautlus Pompilius, they're fun :^)
I've heard music is useful for learning languages, glad to have the idea reinforced.
I've been trying to speak it, but I suspect that will come more naturally once I develop enough of a vocabulary to actually form sentences. I never thought about the self-consciousness factor, that's honestly pretty reassuring.
focus on nouns, pronouns & verbs for situations you might find yourself in, string together words very basically with sentences consisting of lots of pointing, don't worry about fancy conjugation & declension & other and finer points of grammar until you can get across a basic level of understanding. Once you've put in the hard work of sweating over 3/4-word sentences, adding more on is easy ;)
The other suggestions are very good, but eventually a roadblock you'll encounter is vocabulary. A great way to efficiently learn lots of vocabulary is spaced repetition software (SRS). SRS is essentially a flashcard scheduling system designed to be the most efficient way to memorize content, as it brings up the flashcard at intervals designed to remind you right before you forget. Personally I like Anki because it's FOSS, super configurable, and has a sizeable community. I've been using it to learn Chinese vocab and it's very effective.
A mistake I see people who use SRS make is that they don't consume any (or very little) content in the
language they're trying to learn. Once you feel relatively comfortable in the language, try watching a TV show in that language (even just a kids TV show). In my experience, foreign television is an amazing way to improve, as it is the closest to immersion you'll get when you can't actually be in a country where the language is natively spoken.
A good way to learn a language is with someone who can speak it I'm always down for a group chat or something if anyone knows Russian and has free time
This website is dead :(
I have been learning Chinese, and I have found a FANTASTIC course for it in dominochinese.com
Each video is about 3 minutes long and teaches you a world and gives examples and pitfalls for use. It also teaches common slang. It's done by someone who can speak chinese natively, and has more native speakers (sometimes they just pick some random chinese people off the street!) giving examples. After a certain level all the lessons are taught in chinese by a native speaker.
I use that plus Anki, I make my own deck. Sometimes I use Wiktionary to figure out the etymology of the word -- something my brain kind of requires to make sense of things, but the Domino course has been pretty good at fulfilling that need!
For russian I've been using Anki, plus the USA's FSI Russian Language course. I tried learning Russian before but found reading it really difficult, and never improved until I did the exercises in the FSI course, I kind of had to just relearn the language (I previously used Duolingo but they never actually taught the pronunciation of the letters and words properly). I used the Michael Thomas course and got halfway through the first group of lessons about two years ago, and I can still remember a fair number of the words I learned despite not practicing it.
I recently discovered the "Speaking Russian Fast Track by Elvira Ivanova" playlist on Spotify, and I like it, despite it being a little faster than I would prefer. It's good for just getting the feel of the pronunciations.
I plan on digging out some small pieces of Russian poetry to learn the language, if anyone can recommend some simple poems that'd be great :]
I would give Duolingo a try. I've been doing Russian for a few weeks and it's pretty good with it's spaced repetition and learning!
I really don't mean to sound like a jerk, so I hope this doesn't come across as a criticism of you, @iDanoo. Finding learning resources can be really tough, and Duolingo's a big name. Their Spanish for English speakers seems well-regarded, and I've found that their robo-voice does a shockingly credible job of Welsh, a language that I grew up with and did not assume any text-to-speech engine would ever do reasonably, let alone ever even bother with.
That said: as a counterpoint, do not use Duolingo for Russian. At the middle-higher levels, the grammar is very bad. In places, it sounds like machine translations. Starting off with Duolingo gave me a lot that I've had to unlearn.
A good alternative is Memrise, which is on principle pretty similar. It costs money, but for that money you get grammar that makes sense, and recordings (audio and video) of actual speakers integrated into the lessons. (edit: I should add that I'm not proposing that Memrise is an alternative to more intensive study -- but for the Duolingo-esque "10 minutes while you're in a waiting room or on the bus" scenario, it's great.)
Oh I have got deep enough to have in-depth experience or knowledge of it. But thank you! Definitely helpful :)
I'm not a big fan of duolingo it doesn't teach very well and counts things wrong that shouldn't be
The thing about duolingo, and the reason it's able to be free is that the majority of the content is not actually created by paid employees, but by volunteers who know two languages fluently enough to build a course in it. The developers give access to the tools, but it's only ever gonna be so effective. But if you get marked wrong on something that should be right, flagging it as a mistake really helps it improve!
I think a lot of ppl think it's a silver bullet & it's not, but it's certainly a rly effective tool to have in one's toolbox, especially getting off the ground!
Some superb replies and quality responses here. Anyone got any tips and tricks for learning French?
I use babbel, it's great!!
It's around €20 for a 3 month subscription, well worth it!
https://www.babbel.com/learn-russian-online
I use the android app, do all my learning on my daily commute! I'm learning Swedish.