Elena Grebenyuk

Elena is a great teacher with an innovative and personalized approach, and anyone would be lucky and privileged to have the opportunity to learn with her. She is intuitive in her approach and is able to sense her students’ needs before they have to articulate them. Elena is flexible in her methodology, happily uses a traditional, communicative or individualized approach, and welcomes student suggestions or requests. Due to this flexibility, Elena would be able to work with anyone, regardless of diverse needs or preferences. I have dyslexia, which means that attempting to teach me with a more traditional method that one often sees when learning Russian, wherein a heavy emphasis is put on reading, grammar and rote memorization, rather than language usage, is less successful for me. Elena was happy to learn more about how to best teach according to my needs, and to try new strategies, while still making me feel respected, capable and intelligent. She is a rare find on italki.

This was a really fun and productive lesson. Elena is a polyglot herself therefore she understands the learning process of her students and was very helpful in allowing me to ramble in Italian. Really patient teacher and all of her hints were well timed and allowed our conversation to flow naturally.

Ottima lezione, abbiamo ripassato tanti argomenti dopo una mia lunga assenza.

I have enjoyed all of my lessons with Elena! She is a wonderful Italian teacher who makes lessons interesting and challenging. She also provides extra reading recommendations, videos and 'homework' if desired, which I have really enjoyed working through in my own time. From the start, I have felt comfortable to make mistakes - thanks to Elena's supportive nature! I hope she never stops teaching Italian on italkie!

хорошо

I simply cannot recommend Elena enough. I went from struggling to speak to successfully speaking in full sentences and not being afraid to make mistakes (I still make them - I just know it is okay now). Elena is very good at not correcting so the mistakes so often that it inhabits the conversation. I have also learned so many words, and I feel like my active vocabulary is much, much better. As always, this was a very good, despite the strange circumstances. I didn't feel like today I was quite as successful as last time (reading and vocabulary retention was harder than last time), but I was very glad to hear that my intonation was less French sounding than usual :)