Technically, I don’t teach on my blog, I do it on Skype. But still as you would call it an educational website, it has some features. I’ve counted 6 of them.
WHAT I DO
1. I publish only unique content.
Yes-yes! I have never done and will never do copy/pasting. What you will find on my blog, you won’t find anywhere else. Every single day I listen very attentively to how Russians speak and fifty times a day I ask myself questions like these ‘Will Russian learners understand this expression when they hear it?’ ‘Doesn’t it sound confusing for a learner?’ ‘How can that word or expression ever be explained?’
And also I get topics for the articles on my blog from tutoring, since Russian tutoring is my part-time job.
Me during a Russian lesson: «Well, it’s difficult to explain…»
2. I publish only those articles that are about real language.
No bullshit can be translated into Russian as «Не гони фигню», «Не неси фигню». Or just «Без фигни» or «Давай без фигни».
What I publish on my blog are things from real Russian, the language that Russians use in everyday situations. Here you can find the things that you won’t read in books; the things that you would know and understand only after many years of self-studying.
3. I focus on audio.
Since I’d like to teach you conversational Russian, I have recorded a number of audio clips that will help you to develop the skills to recognize the words in real speech.
I make an audio for every blog entry, so you can always listen to it while on the bus or while making love food.
WHAT I DON’T DO
None Russian learned Russian by books.
1. I don’t overload you with Grammar. Why?
Actually, there are four reasons for this.
First: it’s boring.
Second: there are lots of other websites that have already published that stuff. From time to time I will post articles with links to other blogs or websites that can offer you decent explanations on Grammar, so you won’t miss out.
Third: I believe that Russian oral speech is much more fun. And what’s oral speech? It’s when you don’t have time to look in the dictionary or think for 5 minutes about Grammar rules and try to recollect verb tenses or noun cases.
Forth (a confession): I am not a Grammar expert. I am a blogger (we have a family blog Uehali.com which we run in Russian), an experienced journalist and an editor. I know what sounds lame and what doesn’t. I will teach you the correct and natural way.
2. I don’t hide.
Why would I? On my blog I share my personal experience in learning languages, I talk about mistakes that I have made, about tips that helped out, about teachers that didn’t believe in me and clumsy situations I got into because of lack of language knowledge.
On many other educational websites you’ll never find an author and never know whether the article was written yesterday or was taken from a book written 20 years ago. Reading this blog you can be sure that you get only up-to-date information.
More than that, you can ask me any questions regarding learning Russian or Russian life in the comment section.
3. I don’t take the language out of context.
In my blog entries I won’t only give some useful bits for learners, but also an explanation of the useful bits! Like why we address a female stranger as ‘a woman’ or why we like to say ‘yes no maybe’ instead of a simple ‘no’. Languages don’t live their own lives separately from reality and it’s not worth pretending they do. But still many educational websites don’t bother to explain why this or that language feature appeared.
I’m doing my best to fix this oversight.
Comments are closed.