language maintenance over the summer?

[Robert Orr]

There's another thing students can try.

If you hear people speaking Russian in malls etc., do try practising - most 
people will be delighted to help -and who knows where it may lead.


--- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ajda Kljun" <ajda.kljun at GMAIL.COM>
To: <SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2008 5:51 AM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] language maintenance over the summer?


> Dear Seelangers,
>
> since several people have expressed interest in hearing the experiences of
> people who are learning Russian by themselves, here are my two cents on
> music and movies.
>
> As far as learning Russian through music goes, here are my personal
> experiences: I think the first Russian song I downloaded was Aquarium's
> Chai. Apart from the repeating chorus, it only has six lines of text, so
> it's no wonder I knew it by heart pretty quickly. Then I started to listen
> to Zemfira and found out that there are English translations of several of
> her songs on http://russmus.net/. I translated the rest of the songs with
> the help of language translators such as http://translation.paralink.com/.
> The English text often did not make much sense, but it helped me to get a
> fast word-to-word translation without having to look up one word at a 
> time.
> The rest I tried to figure out by looking in various dictionaries I found
> online. (Have I mentioned that I am the 'likes to climb high mountains' 
> type
> of learner? :)) I also love Kino and find Tsoi quite easy to understand.
> Since I am a student of classical piano, I have some favorites the average
> student might not share. For example, I printed out the complete text of
> Boris Godunov in Russian and listened to the opera while reading what
> they're actually saying. That was fun.
>
> About Russian movies: I have really enjoyed some of Sokurov's movies. 
> Often,
> a sentence of the narrator is followed by lots of silence which gave me 
> time
> to realize what words he just said, repeat the sentence in my head and 
> then
> move on to the next sentence. Most of the time, I could actually enjoy the
> movie already in the second viewing :) I also plan to watch his Russian 
> Ark
> with the help of the commentary on this site:
> http://www.angelfire.com/ult/cmcdouga/arkhome.htm. Very excited about 
> that!
> Changing the genre completely - one time, my brother downloaded Blade 
> Runner
> dubbed in Russian (by accident), so we watched it together. The story is 
> so
> simple that we could mostly figure out what they were saying without
> actually understanding the words. I guess watching Russian soap operas 
> could
> work in the same way.
>
> One thing I have to mention though is the fact that my native tongue is
> Slovene. So I already understood the way Slavic languages work when I
> started to learn Russian, which probably made it a lot easier for me. But
> from my experience in learning other languages - Italian, English and 
> German
> - I can say that lots of exposure worked in all cases. Also, I found out
> that working with texts which really really interest me made me much more
> motivated.
>
> Kind regards,
> Ajda Kljun.
>
>
> 2008/4/6, Alina Makin <resco at umich.edu>:
>>
>> I agree that summer language maintenance should be based on fun and
>> *interactive* activities.  My elementary and intermediate students this
>> year
>> had a riot corresponding with Russians at a basic level through
>> http://www.vkontakte.ru website.  Beyond reading and writing activities 
>> at
>> the personal correspondence level, they also got hooked up with some of
>> their
>> regular e-pals through skype and got a chance to talk, which was 
>> extremely
>> popular.  Obviously, you need to warn them about possible abuse of
>> internet
>> communication but this generation of learners seems to have got it down
>> very
>> well by now.  They all report how much fun and language learning they got
>> through it, so I am kind of inclined to suggest it as one of several
>> possible
>> summer activities.  Obviously, there is no singular answer to this
>> question and
>> one should suggest a variety of activities appropriate to every learning
>> style
>> and type of learner, or a mix of them.
>>
>>
>> Alina Makin
>> University of Michigan
>>
>>
>>
>>
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