Reviewing rosetta stone lessons is useful
Going back through old Rosetta Stone lessons is interesting, because each time I learn more or see different things.
The first time through the material, 10-odd months ago, I had just started learning Russian, to it was the first exposure to pronunciation, conjugation and grammar. This is the 'absorption without understanding' phase of learning the language. Keep in mind that Rosetta Stone always teaches in the new language, so they don't explain everything. Everything is by example. (And, in practice, many of the early examples are common activities -- eating, sleeping, drinking -- and many of those are highly exceptional/irregular examples in Russian).
This time around is a rapid review, because I'm just doing the primary lessons, not the dozens of little lessons. I know most of the vocabulary that it is teaching so I don't need to be constantly reminded, I don't think. And I'd like to finish reviewing the level 1 unit by the end of this weekend or something. When I start the level 2 unit, I'll slow down, because my retention and comprehension there is a lot lower.
For my level 1 review, I am focusing on each word and example sentence to give a deep explanation in m own head about why it is structured the way it is. I'm taking the more interesting points and collecting them in a few files on my computer. I'm often remembering other things I've read and not needing to do a lot of research. For example: "Oh right, these words get a different ending because of the spelling rule" or "oh right, masculine inanimate nouns don't change in the accusative case, but feminine ones do."
I'm collecting or writing example sentences and annotating them grammatical notes, primarily the cases of each of the nouns or pronouns in the sentence. And in doing this exercise, I finally, truly GET IT on how the cases work for a possessive statement (both positive and negated). Many months ago, that was the first major roadblock in Rosetta Stone for me, and the first sign I was in over my head. In building my annotated grammar examples, I finally see how I was misinterpreting the examples. Here are my examples I wrote into my notes:
she has a book
у неё есть книга
у неё (genitive) есть книга (nominative)
the boy doesn’t have a pen
у мальчика нет ручки
у мальчика (genitive) нет ручки (genitive)
The thing that was messing me up in some of the examples is that either the person or the item can be plural. (e.g. "she has books" or "the kids have a ball"). The cases stay the same, as marked above, but they just switch to the plural variants. Here's my example annotations for the Rosetta Stone example that confused me.
the boys have water
у мальчиков есть вода
у мальчиков (genitive plural) есть вода (nominative singular)
the boys do not have water
у мальчиков нет воды
у мальчиков (genitive plural) нет воды (genitive singular)
Anyway, annotating some examples is really helping my understanding. It'll take some effort to move on from that to consistent and correct usage.
I've collected all the verbs from the first four lessons, and I plan to do a writing exercise on most of them. The idea is to write a LOT of sentences and get very familiar with all of the ways each verb can appear in a sentence.
3 tenses (past/present/future) x 2 quantities (singular/plural) x 3 points of view (first/second/third person) = 18 different conjugations. I've only got the imperfective verbs, but my intent is to look up the perfective verbs for each and add them to my drill. So double that number to 36 examples (or 72 examples if we're talking a verb of motion).
That's a lot of examples, and so I'm guessing I won't stick with it past a few key verbs. Maybe it becomes my penance when I forget a conjugation or something. A nice goal here might be to really lock into my head the 20 or so different variations of verb conjugation and associate that with each verb. When you look it up in a dictionary, it usually lists which variant it is, but I've never been able to memorize them all. My feeling is, in the short term, just drilling and practicing on usage will still get me farther than trying to bulk-memorize the variations.
Anyway, the goals of the review are:
* really solidify my understanding of the grammar of certain sentence structures
* get a deeper understanding of the words I'm using, particularly in unusual cases.
* more practice writing/spelling/using the language.
The writing exercises are going to significantly lag the review. The review and grammar notes are the real winner as it gives me detailed grammar notes to review that I've personally written, which is something I've found is key to comprehension and recall.
The first time through the material, 10-odd months ago, I had just started learning Russian, to it was the first exposure to pronunciation, conjugation and grammar. This is the 'absorption without understanding' phase of learning the language. Keep in mind that Rosetta Stone always teaches in the new language, so they don't explain everything. Everything is by example. (And, in practice, many of the early examples are common activities -- eating, sleeping, drinking -- and many of those are highly exceptional/irregular examples in Russian).
This time around is a rapid review, because I'm just doing the primary lessons, not the dozens of little lessons. I know most of the vocabulary that it is teaching so I don't need to be constantly reminded, I don't think. And I'd like to finish reviewing the level 1 unit by the end of this weekend or something. When I start the level 2 unit, I'll slow down, because my retention and comprehension there is a lot lower.
For my level 1 review, I am focusing on each word and example sentence to give a deep explanation in m own head about why it is structured the way it is. I'm taking the more interesting points and collecting them in a few files on my computer. I'm often remembering other things I've read and not needing to do a lot of research. For example: "Oh right, these words get a different ending because of the spelling rule" or "oh right, masculine inanimate nouns don't change in the accusative case, but feminine ones do."
I'm collecting or writing example sentences and annotating them grammatical notes, primarily the cases of each of the nouns or pronouns in the sentence. And in doing this exercise, I finally, truly GET IT on how the cases work for a possessive statement (both positive and negated). Many months ago, that was the first major roadblock in Rosetta Stone for me, and the first sign I was in over my head. In building my annotated grammar examples, I finally see how I was misinterpreting the examples. Here are my examples I wrote into my notes:
she has a book
у неё есть книга
у неё (genitive) есть книга (nominative)
the boy doesn’t have a pen
у мальчика нет ручки
у мальчика (genitive) нет ручки (genitive)
The thing that was messing me up in some of the examples is that either the person or the item can be plural. (e.g. "she has books" or "the kids have a ball"). The cases stay the same, as marked above, but they just switch to the plural variants. Here's my example annotations for the Rosetta Stone example that confused me.
the boys have water
у мальчиков есть вода
у мальчиков (genitive plural) есть вода (nominative singular)
the boys do not have water
у мальчиков нет воды
у мальчиков (genitive plural) нет воды (genitive singular)
Anyway, annotating some examples is really helping my understanding. It'll take some effort to move on from that to consistent and correct usage.
I've collected all the verbs from the first four lessons, and I plan to do a writing exercise on most of them. The idea is to write a LOT of sentences and get very familiar with all of the ways each verb can appear in a sentence.
3 tenses (past/present/future) x 2 quantities (singular/plural) x 3 points of view (first/second/third person) = 18 different conjugations. I've only got the imperfective verbs, but my intent is to look up the perfective verbs for each and add them to my drill. So double that number to 36 examples (or 72 examples if we're talking a verb of motion).
That's a lot of examples, and so I'm guessing I won't stick with it past a few key verbs. Maybe it becomes my penance when I forget a conjugation or something. A nice goal here might be to really lock into my head the 20 or so different variations of verb conjugation and associate that with each verb. When you look it up in a dictionary, it usually lists which variant it is, but I've never been able to memorize them all. My feeling is, in the short term, just drilling and practicing on usage will still get me farther than trying to bulk-memorize the variations.
Anyway, the goals of the review are:
* really solidify my understanding of the grammar of certain sentence structures
* get a deeper understanding of the words I'm using, particularly in unusual cases.
* more practice writing/spelling/using the language.
The writing exercises are going to significantly lag the review. The review and grammar notes are the real winner as it gives me detailed grammar notes to review that I've personally written, which is something I've found is key to comprehension and recall.