Learn to speak russian?
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at
9:33 pm
I h ave the Rosetta stone for Russian, so far its been okay but im only on lesson 3...I mastered lesson 1 and 2 but for the third its like not sinking in....
Any1 know a good way to use rosetta stone a certain way to learn it beter?
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Tagged with: lesson 1 • lesson 3 • rosetta stone
Filed under: Russian - Written and Spoken
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Learning Russian is good only combining the tools YOU find most suitable and helpful plus COMMUNICATION with native speakers – no other way, I’m afraid.
I don’t like Rosetta stone -I would recomend using some Russian podcasts and trying to practice some Russian.
Ya izuchal rusky yazik tak pishau menya.
The user "Randem" is right that teaching grammar is not Rosetta Stone’s strong point, and so you should entertain additional sources. But you can still learn a lot with Rosetta Stone. I have the full set of Rosetta Stone Russian volumes.
To answer your question directly, the best way to benefit fully from Rosetta stone is to master every lesson multiple times, i.e., use every variation of learning provided by the software.
For example, master Lesson 3 with full sound and text shown (which is the easiest method). Then master Lesson 3 again but with text and no sound (which will force you to emphasize reading comprehension only). Then master Lesson 3 again with sound but no text (which forces you to emphasize listening comprehension only). If you check your program options, you will see there are even more variations for learning each lesson. So master each lesson for each of the provided variations.
The best way to really master something, is to spread the repetition of material over a longer period of time. So instead of mastering a lesson repeatedly with all of the variations before ever advancing to the next lesson, here is a more beneficial suggestion:
master Lesson 1 (sound & text)
master Lesson 2 (sound & text)
master Lesson 1 (text only)
master Lesson 3 (sound & text)
master Lesson 2 (text only)
master Lesson 1 (sound only)
master Lesson 4 (sound & text)
master Lesson 3 (text only)
master Lesson 2 (sound only)
master Lesson 5 (sound & text)
master Lesson 4 (text only)
master Lesson 3 (sound only)
master Lesson 6 (sound & text)
master Lesson 5 (text only)
master Lesson 4 (sound only)
. . . and so on . . .
This way, you spread out the exposure to each Lesson over a longer period of time, which really will help you to permanently memorize the material, and will also reduce the possibility of boredom by not repeating the same lesson immediately.
Finally, when you hear native speakers pronounce something in Rosetta Stone, it is beneficial to repeat it aloud and accurately immediately afterword.
Rosetta Stone is a fine learning tool, but not as your *only* tool.
You need some grammar, which isn’t well-explained in Rosetta Stone, but is described in great detail here: http://www.alphadictionary.com/rusgrammar/
You also need a good Russian-English dictionary. Personally, I prefer web sites to books, so I use http://www.wordreference.com/ruen/ , which is an excellent reference.
As far as ways to "learn better", I think it’s important to understand basic concepts like verb conjugation, noun cases, and verb aspects… concepts which are very important to understanding the Russian language, but which are hard to convey through the Rosetta Stone teaching method. My recommendation is, in addition to the above references, you should get two books:
Living Language: Russian Complete Course, and
Teach Yourself: Russian Grammar