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I've come to the conclusion that I only love grammar when I can get it to come out of my mouth (or pen) correctly. Otherwise, I'm basically a vocabulary girl. Today was a bad grammar day. I know it's at least in part because I put off my essay to the last second and didn't get much sleep last night, plus I drank coffee at dinner yesterday, so I couldn't sleep anyway. Today just started out like one of those Mondays that is quintessentially a Monday: I sounded like an uneducated 4th grader every time I tried to say anything, I didn't seem to have an opinion about anything we discussed in class (and you all know how rare that is), and my homework was needlessly puzzling. However, things improved a little in the afternoon after I went to the gym, and then checked my mailbox to find I had two letters from home!! Thank you so much-- it made me feel so good to know you're keeping track of me, and willing to put in the time to write a note.
I thought the cooking club started tonight, but it turns out it's next weekend, since the teacher who will be leading it just got here yesterday. So next Monday I'll tell you what we make. =)
However, since I thought the cooking club met for two hours this evening, all my homework is already done. I'm going to take it all up to office hours in a little bit, because I seem to have completely forgotten how to use certain prepositions with time expressions, and our course materials assume that we already know them (as we should-- it's an inexplicably weak area for me). So I'm going to go get some help from the strict but caring Evgeniya Olegovna.
Almost every day there are moments here when I think "What the heck am I doing here? I obviously have no idea what I'm doing." I had this thought several times today. But then, after dinner, I was in the middle of a conversation with Adam and Zacch (yes, two Cs), and I realized that I'd forgotten we were speaking Russian. So, it's working, maybe not as fast as I'd like, but this immersion thing really does work. Plus, it's only been two weeks. I think I felt like this at the beginning in Russia too, like I wasn't improving fast enough. Then a couple months in, boom! My language took off. So I'm trying to be patient. Also, I'm trying to make the transition from language learning to language acquisition; that is, I'm trying to find a way to move words and grammar constructions from my passive to my active vocabulary. Haven't figured out how to do it yet, but hopefully it'll come along.
In the meantime, I'm preparing for karaoke night in a couple weeks by looking up lyrics to my favorite Russian pop songs on the internet. I'm going to own that stage! =)
5 months ago
2 comments:
Oh MY God! Russian Kareoke?! Otlichna. Try a little Zemfira perhaps. 'Prosti menya maya lybov' is pretty rockin.'
I wonder how many of us dorks know exactly what you're talking about when you mention "time/preposition phrasal agreement" and "learning vs. acquisition?" I do, and find it interesting.
I plan to start my next letter to you, but it will probably take me about a week just to write it. Lots to tell from my weekend, and hopefully from the rest of this week as well!
Sorry, English for brevity. Glad you are well and thanks for updates!
Have you had a dream in Russian yet? I think that would be a major milestone for me, and I've heard (as you probably have) that it's a good fluency test. It sounds like you're about as frustrated as you probably should be in your situation. If immersion programs weren't incredibly challenging, they wouldn't be working. It sounds like you're sitting on a plateau right now, but that's a good thing because you're surely building up a new level of skills that will just click with you one of these days, and you'll find that you're making huge strides. That's how it works for me, anyway. My daughter is in that phase where it seems like she's taking a step backward, saying things incorrectly that she already "knows," but I know she's trying out new things and figuring out why they work instead of just repeating what she hears. She's at a plateau as well--we know that it's normal for her age but it can be frustrating anyway (especially for her, when we don't understand what she's telling us). Anyway, I know you don't need me to tell you to hang in there, but hang in there! It's actually fun for me to hear about your development in Russian, for some reason.
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