Switzerland (Schweiz / Suisse / Svizzera / Svizra)dEhiN wrote:But what about the various conjunction and subordination words that are typically considered intermediate and/or advanced vocabulary? They are used and repeated often by native speakers. Obviously for a beginner second language learner, you can get by fine with really simple sentences and using simple conjoining words (such as the equivalent of "and" in whatever language). But my experience is that I wasn't ready to learn the conjunction words until A2 or B1, and then the real work began of learning the subtleties of each word. Yet I doubt the difficulty is due to lack of exposure. I think it's just more due to the complexity of the concept being expressed. You see the same thing (afaik) in children who are exposed to probably all the core vocab over the first however many months to years before they learn to speak. Yet when they start speaking, they also can only string together basic sentences.
Conjunctions and subordination words are used often, but not as often as that in normal speech patterns - much more in writing. Most speech patterns are much simpler.
However, teaching/learning a foreign language cannot simply be done in a linear fashion - as in teaching the first 100 most common words, then the second 100 most common, and so on. That would make for a very dull course. And courses are never usually based on statistical analysis of vocabulary in any case but structured around grammar - and even then it's often done quite arbitrarily rather than logically.
Conjunctions and subordination words are not simply vocabulary either but require an understanding of, and are therefore dependent on, a certain level of grammar - certainly in most northern European languages where these words mostly require a change in the word order, or in the Latin languages where you might be required to use a subjunctive or a sequence of tenses - which comes down to what you call complexity of the concept.
When it comes to children, they are exposed to a lot of vocabulary, but only very passively and they don't grasp or even memorise it. But they don't take years to learn to speak - most children are within a 9 month to 18 month range.
This is actually one of the main differences between children learning (any) language and a child at school, and then an adult - our core (native) vocabulary changes so much that our very expectations and therefore demands are hugely different from one period of life to another. As an example, a school pupil may not care much if he can't say 'however' in a foreign language (or even in his own for that matter), but an adult would want to learn that word much earlier...
I think it's very difficult to progress in a language when we don't get the chance to have any inmersion in the country where it's spoken. Moreover, Russian is a complex language. So that's something 
