Well, I started to pick up Russian in the end of February of last year (2014) and I signed up for LingQ in May and I’ve been here on average, 30 minutes a day while balancing college. I’m at 640 words, so Beginner II (800 words) is just at the end of the tunnel.
I’ve been curious for everyone here, what has been your progress after a year from starting from zero?
I’m asking this as more of a progress check. I know you should work at your OWN pace rather than off of others, but I’m curious if after a year, there were good habits you developed and if you feel you were going too slow or fast.
My habits were relaxed. I would listen through the lessons a few times, then read through them once, and sometimes read them out loud. I would create my LingQs and look them up on forvo.com to get a second pronunciation. I would also look up the grammatical meeting on some of the words, hoping that doing this as I went along, the exposure would make grammar just absorbed over the days and an intuitive understanding rather than forced.
I reflect, and I feel like I have a good understanding of the language despite me learning on my own without ANY classes. I understand the logic of most of the grammar, though there are still instances where I’m still baffled (IE Я хочу купить is in the perfective case for some reason).