English courses in the library
Since the new year 2018, I have been assigned to American English courses. Here each library has groups for people who have English as a second language. These classes are free, two hours in the evening, once a week. Teachers are volunteers. Those who wish can attend classes in each library. But I am limited by transport, so I only go to the neighboring library on foot, and in the evening children come to pick me up, because it is dangerous to return through the desert in the dark, even though it is close here.
The group consists of students from different countries and different ages and it is also not uniform and not constant. No one makes anyone to come, there are no homework assignments, they just come to chat. We do verbal exercises. Everyone tells something about themselves that happened during the week. So I have to write at least a few sentences at home, then I ask Mark to correct the mistakes. If the technique now allows you to write words correctly, then correctly build a sentence, use the correct tense, articles and prepositions — this is all problematic. Mark corrects but he cannot explain to me why it has to be written this way. He tells me: “Our English teacher says — listen to your ear.” I either listen to my ear or not, but my head still doesn’t know.
Therefore, I begin to learn english in the middle of the week on the internet almost from scratch. I regret that I didn’t take this class at least since August, when Mark’s school started. Lost almost six months. I knew about this class before, but I thought that they would ask for some kind of residential document and would not allow to come. And then we were told that Mexicans go to these courses, and I thought that they were taught everything in Spanish. Yes, a lot of Hispanic people come, but there are also people from Iran, Germany, Poland, Indonesia, but everyone learns only English.
Mark tells me: “Our English teacher says listen to your ear”
I stopped reading in russian at all, except for the news on the Internet. At the beginning of my visit, I read what the children have in the library on the iPad. They have a lot of fantasy there, and I don’t like it. Therefore, I read mainly Pikul’s historical novels: “Word and Deed” (about the reign of Anna Ioannovna), “Barbarossa”, “In the Backyard of the Great Empire”, “By Feather and Sword”. Then I decided that I should improve my English and switched to books for children from the Life of Famous People series. These are small books, 40 – 50 pages, about famous athletes, about American founding fathers, and so on. The Kindel is very easy to read. Mark put a Russian dictionary on it and an unknown word can be immediately translated. It was he who was given gift cards for Christmas, and he was going to buy another computer game. I offered him to buy an electronic Kindle, otherwise sometimes he took his father’s one, and his father was upset with him, because Mark always changed some settings. Now Mark also allows me to use his reader. You download a e‑book to your device. You can read a e‑book for a whole month. After a month, it deletes itself if you turn on Wi-Fi, and if you don’t, you can read as long as you like.
You can find on the internet many sites by the keywords “electronic library” with and without registration. But you can’t download an intellectual property here for free. So the kids use the library that we have within walking distance. We also take movies there. We recently watched the full-length cartoon “With love, Vincent.” I didn’t really like the plot, but the movie’s technique was impressive. The movie is made in Van Gogh’s painting technique, which are woven into the storyline.
True, all the materials in the library are in English, but in Russian I read and watch what was brought from Russia, and Russian TV. However, I prefer to read a paper book. I like to read memoirs, something historical, something real. It probably comes with age. I remember my mother used to read memoirs, diaries, writers’ letters. I used to think — how can she read this, but now I come to the conclusion that you can better recognize time, events, characters from memoirs and letters.
Yes, technologies and opportunities are very diverse now! The main thing is not to stand still and keep up with these innovations, otherwise, when you retire, you immediately feel that you are turning into a prehistoric mammoth. Thanks to the children and grandchildren, they pull me out of this state a little.
