Retook the C1 Grammar!

Table of Contents

1. Monthly Stats
2. Highlights
3. C1 Exam
4. Grammar
5. Speaking
6. Listening and Reading
7. Watching
8. Overall and Next Month

First, as always, before I get into the meat of the update, here are my Anki and Toggl stats.

My Anki

My Toggl

Highlights

Big highlights this month all center around the C1 exam. As I mentioned in my last wrap up, I was going to be traveling for the two weeks leading up to the exam, and was filled with trepidation of what was to come.

Also, you'll notice in my Toggl stats that I had one day with 2 minutes of Russian. Very productive serious learner I am.

C1 Exam

Well I've done it. Sort of. For those that remember my first attempt, you'll recall that I "only" failed the grammar section the first time around, despite earning a less than adequate score in the writing section. Despite my flurry of questions, all of which boiled down to "are you suuuuuure I passed writing???", I was told again and again that my writing score was considered passing.

So I undertook the gargantuan effort of studying for and ultimately passing the grammar section and, on Aug 26th, I successfully retook and successfully passed that very grammar section. This time, I achieved an illustrious 73% (aka a C-), and while this paltry letter grade would be considered unsatisfactory in grade school, on the Test of Russian as a Foreign Language exam, it's considered passing with flying colors!

And accompanying that grand score, I received this email: which, for those of my non-Russian speaking readers, reads:

Hello Andrew, I've been told that they [the examiners] made a mistake and you must also retake the writing portion. You don't need to pay again, however. You passed the grammar section. Will you be able to retake the writing portion in the near future? Apologies for the misunderstanding.

So you might be thinking to yourself that I'd be up in arms at the misunderstanding, shaking my fist at the sky, cursing the very ground that these examiners walk on. But I'm not. I'm actually quite pleased. This is entirely due to the fact that I had (and even still have!) absolutely no confidence in my ability to pass the grammar section, while having all the confidence in my ability to pass the writing section. If you'll recall, the last time I took the writing section (which consists of 3 essays), I wrote about the wrong subject in one of them (an error which, understandably, costs you many of those hard earned points).

So my plan for the time being is to practice my writing again and take the exam for, hopefully, the final time in October.

Grammar

I am become грамотей, destroyer of textbooks.

Well not quite destroyer, but I'm quite close to finishing my first textbook in Russian, so I might finish it out just for the memes.

Speaking

Barely uttered a word in Russian this month, though my language partner Max tends to give me strange looks after long monologues less often, so I'll take that as a sign that my coherence is steadily improving. Gotta take the small wins where you can get them.

Listening and Reading

I listened to 1 audiobook this month:

1. Архив Шерлока Холсма (The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes)

I also read a book:

1. Огородная ведьма (Vegetable Garden Witch)

Not to much of note here other than I've now officially finished out the entire Sherlock Holmes canon, but in Russian.

Reading is still my biggest chunk of time spent in Russian (note included above is the two books that I'm reading right now, since I didn't finish them in August). The process of reading is only getting easier with every finished book, and my Anki deck of words mined from my kindle grows with every passing day, reaching for higher highs, living among the gods on Olympus (it has almost 2k words!!).

My eventual loooong term goal is to have 10,000 words/sentences mined from books read and imported into my Anki. I average just under 15 new words a day added, so some quick math says that I should hit that goal in 533 days.

I also started listening to a new podcast about raising kids called любить нельзя воспитывать (you can't teach [them] to love, rough translation). It's a banger of a podcast, the episodes are nearly 1.5 hours long with a very conversational and approachable vibe, and he takes a very strong stance on the Ukraine war, which is refreshing.

Watching

Finished out Тайны Госпожи Кирсановой which was excellent at the end. However, it ends on several large cliffhangers and apparently has no continuation, so I'll be forever haunted by what could have been.

Otherwise, I started watching Кухня, which is probably the most famous Russian TV show. There is even an entire English dub on YouTube. This show is legit funny and has that irreplaceable 2010s TV show vibe that just makes for easy watching. They even managed to include a "moral" at the end of each episode. The show is more or less fully understandable, but there are still times when I miss entire sentences b/c someone is shouting or mumbling or whispering or any of the other myriad ways that make language comprehension tough.

Overall and Next Month

Couldn't be more pleased with the outcomes this month. Despite not reaching my 100/hour/month goal, I passed the grammar section and that's all that matters.

For this upcoming month, I'll mostly be focused on writing, so I'm going to try to get those numbers pumped up in preparation for the exam.

Thanks for reading! Закругляюсь!