After listening to Steve on the mistake that beginners make in not reading authentic material soon enough I decided to import a short story by Chekhov into LINGQ. It was nearly all blue! There were aprrox. 650 unknown words. I tried to translate the first few sentences by clicking on every word. I found the process exhausting and unenjoyable. While I agree with Steve in principle and I will still try to find authentic texts to read, perhaps something shorter and with a few more known words would suit me better. Also, Steve’s fundamental principle of doing what you enjoy is of paramount importance to me.
This is how I am learning: I listen to a lesson once, read the text and translate it by Lingqing the unknown words. Later I will review the words using the multiple choice function along with all my other Lingqed words. I have now covered just over 100 lessons of First Steps. Now I am ready to listen again. I listened to lessons 1-10 again and this time my comprehension had improved dramatically. I conclude that it would be a waste of time for me to listen to the lesson several times in the beginning, because all I would be doing is listening to sounds that I don’t understand. I do this with Russian songs because I think it helps me with understanding how the language is used. I plan to translate the lyrics at some stage.
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When I hear from Steve or from some other people the words of ‘authentic material’, I can’t really understand it!..
What does it mean?
Yes, there are some simple texts for beginners - and they must be EASY otherwise the learners will lose the motivation!
But I think that all my texts for the Intermnediate level are AUTHENTIC because I and my friends speak so! - All these courses - РАССКАЗЫ О РОССИИ, ДЕНЬ ЗА ДНЁМ, О ВРЕМЕНИ И О СЕБЕ, ПОЛЕЗНЫЕ ДИАЛОГИ, ТЕЛЕФОННЫЕ РАЗГОВОРЫ, 5 МИНУТ О ПОЛИТИКЕ, О ПРИРОДЕ И ЖИВОТНЫХ.
Perhaps, I limit only the time of these podcasts, not limit the vocabulary und the spole constructions.
Maybe they also have not so much slang, but I don’t think that it’s good to use too much slang.
But the main focus on language learning is to go ahead step by step, not to jump right away into level C.
At least, if you have some certain interest in History, Physics and so on, you can alternate the more difficult texts from this area with the easier general texts to enrich your vocabulary anf you grammar skills.
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Thank you for your encouraging post Evgueny. How Steve is able to listen or read level C material after a couple of weeks, if this is what he is implying, I don’t know. Because, I find it impossible to do so with any comprehension or enjoyment. I see no point in listening to or reading material that is over my head. My wife helped me to find and import some short beginner and intermediate texts that are more suitable to my level in which all the words are not blue! I like a challenge, but if it is too discouraging, there is no point. I am continuing with your course, First Steps. I am up to lesson 106.
The following comment seems to me to be most sensible: But the main focus on language learning is to go ahead step by step, not to jump right away into level C.