After the above content on LingQ (repeating them several times), I moved onto watching Russian with Max on YouTube with Language Reactor. I’ve noticed a signifcant increase in the amount of content I can get through with Language Reactor directly on YouTube instead of studying the content on LingQ, as I don’t have to waste a lot of time selecting the best definition from the list of Community Definitions. To be exact, I’ve watched 166 videos of Russian with Max directly on YouTube with Language Reactor, which accounts for ~48 hours of content. These days I watch Russian with Max on 1.15x to 1.5x, as I’m used to his voice and he speaks kinda slow. If I were to have studied these videos on LingQ, this would’ve been 17,579 New Words, which I would’ve needed to choose the best definition from a list! So you can see why I can cover much more content directly on YouTube instead of spending my time selecting definitions from lists on LingQ.
I’ve watched a few videos from Russian from Afar, but I found he’s quite basic and talks incredibly slow for my level, so I haven’t watched many of his videos.
I’m currently searching for new content to watch too, as I’m getting close to having watched all of Russian with Max’s YouTube videos. I found that I can watch the travel TV series Орёл и Решка with Language Reactor, which is aimed at Russian native/bilingual speakers, without too much difficulty.
I notice it takes a long time to drill in the Cyrillic alphabet. (I’m currently at 550k words read and 150h of listening.) My listening comprehension and aural vocabulary progresses much faster than my reading comprehension, due to the alphabet. Like I can easily recognise cognates when they are spoken, but it’s not as easy, when they are written. Eg. информация is obvious, when you hear it, but when I read it, I have to (sub-)vocalise it to understand its meaning, which takes time. Reading while listening is a great solution to this, hence why Language Reactor directly on YouTube works very well. (Alternatively, you can use @roosterburton’s Video Tools, if you want to connect it with your LingQ data.)