97. Russian language study - update #3
I completed my 80 units (60 hours) of Russian language study with Berlitz the night before my wife arrived for her two-week-long visit. I preferred not to spend time in class online while she was in St. Petersburg, and I didn't want a two-week break in my studies with only a few hours of class left, so I made a big push the week before she arrived: six consecutive days of 90-minute lessons, including one session from 10:30 pm until midnight. That was a grind!
I did not quite manage to finish the second level in the Berlitz curriculum (out of 10), but only have a handful of pages left in the course book that I can review on my own. The recent focus was on learning additional cases as well as more verbs and nouns. The majority of new vocabulary might see limited use in everyday situations, but some might be quite useful: new words related to food, furniture, jobs, months, and seasons, for example.
I inquired about continuing with Berlitz (at my own expense, now that the company-provided classes are complete) but the price quoted to me for private lessons is prohibitively expensive. No group instruction is available with Berlitz in St. Petersburg, and I don't know whether that would be the best way for me to continue making progress, either. My supervisor at work recommended I find a local instructor on my own, who will likely be available at half to a third of the cost of a Berlitz instructor. I may do this in the future, but for now I've decided to take a break so that I actually have a bit of free time during the week - I've been missing the ability to relax once in a while after work.
Unfortunately, without the constant training in class, I feel like my knowledge has started to slip. I still have opportunities to practice what I do know throughout each day, but I'm no longer learning lots of new words each week, and the more obscure vocabulary I was taught is leaking out of my brain with no opportunity to use words that will not come up in everyday conversation.
On the other hand, I do think I have a solid base on which I can build. Five or six people have complimented me on my accent-free pronunciation, and I successfully took a two-hour tour in Russian at the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Center with reasonable comprehension of what the tour guide was saying. So I would like to continue making progress and learn more Russian over the next eight months - via self-study for now, and possibly by finding a new instructor at some point later in the year.
I did not quite manage to finish the second level in the Berlitz curriculum (out of 10), but only have a handful of pages left in the course book that I can review on my own. The recent focus was on learning additional cases as well as more verbs and nouns. The majority of new vocabulary might see limited use in everyday situations, but some might be quite useful: new words related to food, furniture, jobs, months, and seasons, for example.
I inquired about continuing with Berlitz (at my own expense, now that the company-provided classes are complete) but the price quoted to me for private lessons is prohibitively expensive. No group instruction is available with Berlitz in St. Petersburg, and I don't know whether that would be the best way for me to continue making progress, either. My supervisor at work recommended I find a local instructor on my own, who will likely be available at half to a third of the cost of a Berlitz instructor. I may do this in the future, but for now I've decided to take a break so that I actually have a bit of free time during the week - I've been missing the ability to relax once in a while after work.
Unfortunately, without the constant training in class, I feel like my knowledge has started to slip. I still have opportunities to practice what I do know throughout each day, but I'm no longer learning lots of new words each week, and the more obscure vocabulary I was taught is leaking out of my brain with no opportunity to use words that will not come up in everyday conversation.
On the other hand, I do think I have a solid base on which I can build. Five or six people have complimented me on my accent-free pronunciation, and I successfully took a two-hour tour in Russian at the Staraya Derevnya Restoration and Storage Center with reasonable comprehension of what the tour guide was saying. So I would like to continue making progress and learn more Russian over the next eight months - via self-study for now, and possibly by finding a new instructor at some point later in the year.
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