Learning Russian - A Reflection

Today, my formal Russian language education at the Vaganova Academy came to an end. In our final class session, I completed the second part of our end-of-year exam and returned the last of the books I'd borrowed. In the remaining few weeks before my studies in Saint Petersburg finish, I'll continue to learn and practice Russian as I go through my day-to-day life, but now feels like an appropriate time to pause and reflect on this experience and on where I am now.

I am still far from fluent in Russian, but I've also come a long way from where I was when I arrived in September of 2013. I had already learned the alphabet and had a vocabulary that I estimate comprised of somewhere between 150 and 200 simple Russian words. Some of these words were body parts, and others, pieces of conversational phrases I'd memorized. I knew the words for cockroach and butterfly, and how to ask if a food contains meat. Two summers prior, a friend had managed to teach me the words for tomato and cucumber, and I somehow still managed to remember them.

In ballet class, I was lost and confused. I could usually tell what body part my teacher was talking about, but wouldn't know what we were supposed to be fixing. Acting class was horribly confusing, as the teacher spent much of the time talking and explaining. Eventually he learned that I knew more French than Russian, and, since he spoke more French than English, spoke to me primarily in French until well into the second semester. My other teachers would speak in a mix of English and Russian, going out of their way to help me and the other new international students as best as they could, though I frequently still found myself without any idea what I was supposed to be doing. Communicating with my classmates frequently involved a bizarre mix of English, Russian, sound effects, and improvised pantomime.

In the beginning, I learned a lot through trial and error. Unable to read the packaging, I bought a box of tea that I later realized was loose leaf instead of bagged. A classmate and I missed our first acting class because we were unable to read the schedule. It was several weeks before I realized that I had been washing my colored garments with detergent that was specifically meant for white clothing.

However stressful this all might have been at the time, I got through all of these mixups and mistakes and everything turned out no worse in spite of them. I am proud to say that I never again failed to show up at a class because I couldn't read the schedule, the only other times I purchased loose-leaf tea were intentional, and I now know how to tell the difference between laundry detergent for colored and white clothing.

Despite my non-fluency, I am comfortable enough with Russian that getting around the city and going through the various parts of my normal life here is no longer stressful. I understand nearly everything that my teacher says during ballet class. Just this weekend, I took a solo adventure to a park on an island a bit north of the central part of Saint Petersburg, where I had never been before. There was an open-air theater festival there that had been recommended to me, and, with the help of an announcement in a local newspaper and the park's official website (both in Russian), as well as the Google Maps app on my phone, I got myself there and back without any problems. I understand the play on words that's printed on the inside flap of the package of tea I just bought (it incorporates the word for tea into the Russian equivalent of bon apetit). I'm able to use the self-checkout machines that have been installed at a few of the nearby grocery stores, and I can communicate with all of my classmates now - not just those who speak English.

What I've learned goes beyond just language skills. Understanding unfamiliar words is often an exercise in problem solving - figuring out what words sound similar or have the same root, and using context to figure out what meaning might actually make sense - as is discerning the meaning of an unfamiliar grammatical construction. I'm far more comfortable than ever before with being in an experience where there is something that I don't understand. Even if I don't know every word in a sentence, I frequently can determine the general meaning of it, and if I can't figure out what the sentence means, I just have to ask for a clarification or perhaps look up a definition or two. Either way, in the end, everything is fine. What could be treated as a stressful situation transforms into an opportunity to learn something.

I intend for this to be not the end, but rather the beginning of a new chapter in my Russian-learning experience. I have learned the basics and spent nearly two years immersed in a Russian-speaking environment, and now it is time for me to take my learning into my own hands. I have collected several workbooks that I hope to use to deepen my understanding of Russian grammar. I'm still slowly working my way through a copy of the Russian-language version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Hardest of all, but probably most important, I'll try my best to communicate in Russian whenever I have the opportunity to do so.