Hey guys and welcome to the first episode of my series,
today we'll talk about native speakers as partners,
how to find them and use time with them properly
and the 80-20 rule.
Let's go.
No.1: Speech.
Since day 1, I knew how important it was to talk to
a native speaker of Serbian language.
-For how long did you train today?
Unfortunately, when I started, I was living in Australia
and this was during the lockdown period,
but, no matter, there are so many options
to learn Serbian regardless where you live
The first platform that I used was - italki.
Italki is a platform where you can find professors
and Serbian native speakers with whom you can speak,
and all in Serbian
It's incredibly easy to pay for on this platform
and organize time for your class.
I'll link a 10$ coupon in the description.
My problem in the beginning was that I didn't have enough patience,
so only a couple of hours a week wasn't enough for me.
Then I looked for a school...
Hi, I'm Ema from Belgrade Language School.
By the end, I had exactly 16 hours of Serbian a week.
They were so good that I'm still going to their class
Currently, I have 3 hours with Ema from Belgrade Language School
who you have met in one of my old videos
the one when I made a Serbian feast for them.
A suggestion for you and your partner on italki.
There is something called "the 80-20" rule
or Pareto Principle.
Pareto Principle says that for most of outcomes
roughly 80% of consequences
comes form 20% of causes.
Out of 100% of words of the Serbian language
how many will we use every day?
Only 20%, probably less.
For example...
I read about the "zvatelni" case in a book
and I found out that's an old word for "vocative"
and that all of the cases have their own old names.
probably from old Russian.
Okay, you have old words and more modern ones as well,
but we don't use them often.
For example, I know nothing about arts
but if you talk to me about gym or filming
I often use and hear words such as
tripod, frame, deadlift, jumping ropes, burpees and so on.
These are my common words, but maybe not yours.
The first step is to know what is it that
you talk about every day.
In Serbia, you'll get asked a lot about
why did you start learning Serbian,
why are you here,
how do you like it
and so on.
Write out your bio
like a 5 minute self-introduction
"My younger brother is this old and lives and" bla bla bla...
"I went to this and graduated from this"
because guess what, that bio--
is gonna be 90% of what you talk about
when you meet every single person speaking that language,
so you will seem really good if you have that stuff nailed.
I would recommend for you to start that way,
but afterwards you'll be able to talk about the things you love.
When you have class on italki talk about the things that interest you
and ask your partner or professor
to get the questions and material related to that.
Subjects can be about occupation, hobbies, relationship,
kids, specific events and similar.
In the beginning, most likely not everything will be in Serbian,
nut ask your professor to try in Serbian
and if you don't understand, you'll tell them.
Very often, the professor will use their hands, body and face
to explain something to you.
You can record your classes on Skype and Zoom
and afterwards, watch through them,
add the unknown words and constructions to Anki.
We'll talk about that app in detail in episode 3.
Go through your notes and after a month,
when you talk about this subject again,
you'll realize you'll be able to tell a lot more words
and talk for longer without a break.
Of course, if you have a professor of Serbian
it means you won't have to worry of these things,
Every class will have a structure, plan
and also someone who really has experience
with teaching foreigners.
Because of that I made a little "bonus" video
where Eloi and I talk about our experience about
learning Serbian with Belgrade Language School.
You can also see a few clips from my class
with Ema from Belgrade Language School.
This weeks task.
Pay attention to what you regularly talk about,
write it down and organize it by topic.
That's it for today, I hope it was useful and interesting.
Next week we'll talk about vocabulary
so, see you next week and - bye.
Kisses.