Slightly Better Than Last Month!

Table of Contents

1. Monthly Stats
2. Highlights
3. Anki
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

Turns out moving hasn't ended. Lots of new stuff to do and I haven't gotten back into my routine, so I had another month of far less studying.

Big win though is that I studied grammar again for the first time in two months, so glad to at least get a small dub.

Also working out my new commute to work. It's a 30 minute bike ride, which is a great time to get some listening in. Waiting on getting some wind-canceling earbuds for now though, since I wasn't able to hear much using normal earbuds while biking.

Anki

Good month for Anki. Had three lapse days but otherwise very solid. Already feel back into it after the disaster that was May.

Grammar

I did grammar once and it was actually great. It's always fun, I just never start. I also realized through the course of answering the questions, that my intuitive sense for written Russian has gotten a lot better. It's still far from native level (obviously), but many of the answers came to me by intuition instead of working out the rule. This is, of course, a 100% necessary step to achieve if true fluency is your goal (as it is mine).

Speaking

Starting to get back into the groove of iTalki lessons, lessons, and language exchanges. I have a few trips in July, so this will likely dip again a bit, but reestablishing the routine is the main goal for now.

Definitely a lot more hesitation and choppiness in my speech, which is sad but understandable. Sometimes conjugating verbs is just fucking hard.

Listening and Reading

I listened to one audiobook in this month:

1. Его прощальный поклон - His Last Bow

Almost done with the entire Sherlock Holmes canon. These are great to listen to, highly recommend to anyone who is comfortably at this level.

I also read a book:

1. Испытание огня

I also read most of the last book in this series, but technically finished it in July, so it'll show up in next month's wrap up. Honestly it's a great series for learning a lot of modern phrases/slang.

Watching

Lot of random YouTube, not much else to say here. Would like to get back to watching TV shows but I just haven't been able to find the time to commit to a 45 minute episode.

I also definitely need to start watching famous movies, both because they are (hopefully) good, and because knowing the main cultural reference points is one of the cornerstones of Refold Stage 4, which I'd like to transition to at some point.

Overall and Next Month

Overall a bit downtrodden by the fact that this month barely improved over last, but hopeful for the next month. Other than one of the trips I'm on for a few days, I should be able to return a lot of my habits to normalcy. Thinking of retaking the grammar part of the C1 exam in August. Только вперед!

Thanks for reading! Закругляюсь!