Anastasia is a real
polyglot. She learns 4 languages and her level of all of them is already quite
high. The most interesting thing is that each of them she learns herself.
Can you imagine it? Most of us can’t
find time in our everyday routine to revise some words or read a text for
language courses. Now imagine doing it every single day. For 4 languages. And
Anastasia doesn’t spend 5 minutes revising, she studies, as if she was studying
with a real teacher. She shares her daily progress on one of the social networks
and inspires many people to study harder. We asked Anastasia to share with us her story, techniques and, most importantly, ways of defeating laziness!
I’ve never thought of being a polyglot cause I'm the greatest procrastinator the world has ever seen, but one day I found out about the project "Language heroes" about studying languages all by yourself and it hooked me. And saying that I don't mean I am already a polyglot but I have a dream to become one. Now I'm working on four languages - English, Chinese, Swedish, Japanese and can't stop thinking about Spanish.
I've been studying English since 12, but I'm not sure that I was really studying it. School, several courses which I didn't like and parents who made me learn English twenty-four seven. But three years ago I was sent to school to teach English and at the moment I realized: "Oh, wait. WHAT?!". Then I started swotting up on it non-stop - reading Game of Thrones, watching it without subs, chatting with my British friend Josh and I never install video games in Russian and try to watch films only in English.
My first "Chinese" steps were made in university. My parents sent me there to study French but I didn't like it, so one month after torturing myself with the language I hate, parents allowed me to change my faculty and I fell in love with Asia. I was worried that all the students had been studying Chinese hard for a month, so they could already speak in it and that's why I literally didn't sleep. All nights I'd been writing characters, hundreds of them! And three months after I had great progress and my Chinese exam was a piece of cake.
In my 18th I decided to run away from home and drop out of the university (It was terrible). That was the best decision in my life and a year later, I started learning Swedish and Japanese. I don't like course books and workbooks so I just read books and watch news. That's not the best way if you want to speak without any mistakes, but if you want to start using any language as soon as possible - you should try this method out. Just choose an interesting book, read one page, try to remember as many words as you can and retell the text two or three times. Don't cram it, retell using your style and new words to memorize them: "Det fanns vacker flickan som hade lång ingefära hår och perfekt frisyren, även om bo hon i jäkla salt havet!" - like that :)
I can't but say about importance of everyday hard studying for 1-2 hours a day. If I have a lot of work, I wake up earlier, revise recently learned words and listen to different podcast or radio in one of my four languages. The main motivation-killer is boundless laziness. To be honest I can't deal with it, so if I'm not in the mood to study, I start cleaning up the whole flat. It's 65 square meters! After washing up, mopping the floor, dusting only one room, I hear laziness begging me to stop that outrage and do something else. Or I allow myself to have a good rest after working at full stretch, but that happens quite rarely. And of course I never make myself study if I feel under the weather. While watching film, waiting for the bus or even sitting in toilet (I didn't say that!) I chat with my friends - Yui, Johannes, Joshua and å™ç”²æ¬£. Sometimes all at once and I feel my brain melting especially if my boyfriend speaks Russian with me and I start answering him slowly as though I forgot my native language!
I’ve never thought of being a polyglot cause I'm the greatest procrastinator the world has ever seen, but one day I found out about the project "Language heroes" about studying languages all by yourself and it hooked me. And saying that I don't mean I am already a polyglot but I have a dream to become one. Now I'm working on four languages - English, Chinese, Swedish, Japanese and can't stop thinking about Spanish.
I've been studying English since 12, but I'm not sure that I was really studying it. School, several courses which I didn't like and parents who made me learn English twenty-four seven. But three years ago I was sent to school to teach English and at the moment I realized: "Oh, wait. WHAT?!". Then I started swotting up on it non-stop - reading Game of Thrones, watching it without subs, chatting with my British friend Josh and I never install video games in Russian and try to watch films only in English.
My first "Chinese" steps were made in university. My parents sent me there to study French but I didn't like it, so one month after torturing myself with the language I hate, parents allowed me to change my faculty and I fell in love with Asia. I was worried that all the students had been studying Chinese hard for a month, so they could already speak in it and that's why I literally didn't sleep. All nights I'd been writing characters, hundreds of them! And three months after I had great progress and my Chinese exam was a piece of cake.
In my 18th I decided to run away from home and drop out of the university (It was terrible). That was the best decision in my life and a year later, I started learning Swedish and Japanese. I don't like course books and workbooks so I just read books and watch news. That's not the best way if you want to speak without any mistakes, but if you want to start using any language as soon as possible - you should try this method out. Just choose an interesting book, read one page, try to remember as many words as you can and retell the text two or three times. Don't cram it, retell using your style and new words to memorize them: "Det fanns vacker flickan som hade lång ingefära hår och perfekt frisyren, även om bo hon i jäkla salt havet!" - like that :)
I can't but say about importance of everyday hard studying for 1-2 hours a day. If I have a lot of work, I wake up earlier, revise recently learned words and listen to different podcast or radio in one of my four languages. The main motivation-killer is boundless laziness. To be honest I can't deal with it, so if I'm not in the mood to study, I start cleaning up the whole flat. It's 65 square meters! After washing up, mopping the floor, dusting only one room, I hear laziness begging me to stop that outrage and do something else. Or I allow myself to have a good rest after working at full stretch, but that happens quite rarely. And of course I never make myself study if I feel under the weather. While watching film, waiting for the bus or even sitting in toilet (I didn't say that!) I chat with my friends - Yui, Johannes, Joshua and å™ç”²æ¬£. Sometimes all at once and I feel my brain melting especially if my boyfriend speaks Russian with me and I start answering him slowly as though I forgot my native language!
While
looking for my language-buddies I met a lot of strange people who disappeared
after the first message or they even didn't make a point of answering me. I met
Josh in Omegle, Johannes in vk and others in HelloTalk. My strategy is flooding
people like an intrusive child! I never write typical "How do you do"
messages, that's tedious and that way I never know the real character of the
person I talk with. After a while of chatting with my Swedish friend, we
started playing LoL and talking in Skype about Svenska stereotyper. And it was
real fun!
Oh, nearly forgot about everyday reports. When a lot of people know about your language marathon, you'll feel ashamed if you don't study. That's my motivation number 1!
And another motivation to burn candle at both ends is my moving to Saint-Petersburg. I can't wait to travel to Sweden, Japan and China!
All the pictures belong to Anastasia.
Oh, nearly forgot about everyday reports. When a lot of people know about your language marathon, you'll feel ashamed if you don't study. That's my motivation number 1!
And another motivation to burn candle at both ends is my moving to Saint-Petersburg. I can't wait to travel to Sweden, Japan and China!
All the pictures belong to Anastasia.
About Anastasia:
Amateur-artist and English teacher with a dream to become a polyglot and work in game industry. She did everything that she shouldn't have done - ran away from home without money, droped off useless university and started 4 languages at once.
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