A text about laziness was supposed to appear here, but I felt a bit lazy to finish it. If to be more precise: I felt bored 🙄 While the blog isn’t so big, I allow myself periods of petty tyranny and will procrastinate over this task. But what is really interesting to share with you now is the following.
The fact that we stayed in France several days ago and that I touched upon the topic of communication with foreigners in my recent “story from Venice” prompted me and tempted to tell you how I’d integrated basic colloquial English in my life. It was tough, uncompromising and intense. So much intense that I was overstocked by this skill to the bone 😐 In one of the bars of Nice, without much effort and to my own surprise, I managed to find out a recipe for a beer we liked, just with the help of several phrases in English. By the way, I can even admit that the beer was the best among those I'd tried before, and we’ve travelled to Czech Republic several times 😉
Let's get back to the point. I belong to those "lucky ones" who studied German as a foreign language at school. Yeap, in other words, we are those who don’t know either English or German as a result. I was so “lucky” because there were no other options in my first provincial school 🤷🏻♂️ Further it went on the same scheme: I couldn’t switch to English either in high school after moving to the district center and at the university as well. By the way, would anyone consciously choose this language for study? In general, I had to take up English classes from the very beginning right after high school.
Semi-annual courses weren’t at all productive, but at least I realized that it wouldn’t be as easy as pie 🤔 I’ve come to this key recipe spontaneously when I was discussing the details of my training with a remote tutor. So here it is: all the lessons are organized via Skype, in this case the non-verbal communication is rigidly diminished so the speaking constitutes the core concentration. The entire 60-minute lesson (from very first one) is held FULLY in English environment. Language rules, homework and language peculiarities are discussed only in English. Switching to Russian is minimal and allowed only in those cases when several attempts to receive or transmit information in different ways bear no fruit. At the end of the lesson we can set aside time for a brief reflection.
So, the result is the following: during our first two or three lessons my brain was blowing up and was burning all the energy out. I often felt terribly embarrassed: before the lesson, after it and even in the process 😨 Probably, when the 3rd session passed I’ve begun to understand what is going on and have managed to react more or less adequately. Then I’ve gained confidence that we are on the same page with my interlocutor, talking about one and the same thing, not about the different ones 👍 Then, there has come practice and enriching of the vocabulary. I had only two such training sessions, that took about a month and a half (2 times a week). During my 7 and 8 lesson (and even a lot of time later), phrases like "I don't catch it", "Could you repeat it slowly?", "Hmm...do you speak English now?😐” were common and appeared to me as easy as pie. By the way, they are very useful and every traveler should have them in store. Well, you just need some practice and experience and then can start talking without any hesitation, as for non-verbal contact, sometimes you can even understand French 😁
How are we doing on your end if take foreign languages? I believe that it’ll be a good idea to start a column about funny stories of subscribers on this topic 🤔
Translated by Irina Zaitseva
