Tuesday, October 5, 2010

The so-called, and so sought after, immersion.

People are always complaining about how they get so little exposure to their target language in their home countries, pointing out what great progress they would make were they to find themselves in a situation of immersion. Since I have been through immersion once already, or twice if you count Norway, I have no real illusions about how much progress I expect to make. Three months is not a very long time.

I have now been in Russia for almost a month, and what kind of progress have I made? I have no idea. I don't think my spoken Russian is all that much better, however I find it easier to use since I am in contact with it in a more natural way every day. I don't speak all that much Russian though, and the occasions I have spoken most Russian on here have been while meeting my old Russian friends Alexey and Sasha, who neither of them lives here. We have speaking classes, but they are often used for reading, something I find weird, and a lot of the time is used on defining words. Luckily, the class was divided into two groups after 1 1/2 week, so we don't have to explain all that many words anymore, but it is still almost driving me crazy. If we are given as an assignment to read a text, then surely people can look up the words they don't know at home and learn them before the lesson? And then the teacher can just assume that we know them? Or is this pure insanity on my behalf? The actual time we end up speaking during our speaking classes is very limited, and of course the teacher speaks very slowly. And that's it for speaking Russian, the rest of the time we speak Norwegian, even though some classes are in excruciatingly slow Russian. I can't really blame anyone though, I'm the one who is here with a group of students who have studied Russian for one year, but I did expect it to be much, much more difficult. I expected to be constantly busy, but I'm actually more busy when I study in Oslo, since we don't have any reading to do here, except for some grammar in our fabulously dry and boring grammar book. What takes up a lot of time for most people are the translations, but I did them before I even left Oslo, so even though some of them are going to be replaced by other texts (because the first ones were too difficult), I saved myself lots of time. The other thing people seem to find time consuming is writing short essays every week, but since I have been a fan of writing essays for a long time that is something I do in 30 minutes or so...

And now that I don't have all that much to do, I'm going to try to resist that old temptation of over studying everything, and instead try to read and watch Russian television and movies, and of course see more of the city. Getting to and from school reduces my amount of free time, but I try to use it as best I can and read on the way, that is what I can get a place to sit or when we don't walk. Actually being in Russia beats most things, so I don't really care all that much about school.


7 comments:

  1. Your last paragraph says it all. Nice post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Complaining already? I don't think you can see progress right away, you need to sleep on it. From the way you described the classes, the progress will have to come from your other activities. Books? I'd spend the time talking to people about them, buying them in bulk and shipping them off by mail. I'd buy cheap DVDs from street vendors (if they're still cheap over there). Didn't you complain a while back that they're expensive and difficult to find in Oslo? I'd also watch real TV, not movies (something you can do at home). But I imagine you have access to Russian TV at home. Anyway, have fun, whatever you do.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wasn't complaining, I was more or less confirming what I've been saying before leaving. I can actually speak to people in Russian just as much in Oslo as here, so for me it is more about just being in Russia. I watch some TV, but I'm rarely "at home", most of the time is spent at school (often until 7pm, leaving home at 8am) and then out in the city.

    As far as DVDs are concerned, I plan on buying some, and hope I can get them back with me to Norway, but Russian movies aren't really difficult to find online either... ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey! Nice post! You know, I think the point is that you already knew a lot of russian before going there, that´s the reason why the progress is slow. When I went living in Germany I barely spoke a word, so in the first three months I had really a very fast improvement. Then I just got "stuck" and learnt something new everyday but I was already able to communicate so the improvement wasn´t that obvious

    Have fun!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gasp! Or is it Argh? Shiver me timbers. It sucks that your time is employed so wisely at the university. Yes, at an advanced stage, it's difficult to notice progress. I don't remember the a-ha moment in German. I remember being challenged about Italian and realizing I actually understood that stuff. A couple of times when I actually noticed and felt progress after a short period involved sitting on top of a roof with a stack of 50-60 books. Oh, and reading them of course :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Living in St. Petersburg leads you to complaints, absolutely true. I've lived there, know it well. You may want to move to a more sunny place with more pleasant folk around. :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hmm, no, not really. Living here is great.

    ReplyDelete