Why I can't speak English Part 2 Why I can't speak English Part 2 This thought blown my mind away for a little and I said to myself, okay, my vocabulary is around 6000 words, but obviously, it includes both most popular words and less popular ones. What if I learn exactly TOP 3000-5000 of the most popular words and will master using them so perfectly so that I don’t need a single second trying to translate the word in my head. I thought this way I could finally have a major progress in the way I speak. This idea deprived me of a sleep. I started gathering the set of Top-5000 most popular words, avoiding 100500% obvious words, like mother, father, cat, dog, etc. Then I made a little test. All words seemed perfectly familiar to me, I needed no time memorizing them, but! When I tried a reverse translation test (from my language to target language), I faced so much troubles with the very easiest words that just completely blown me away. And all this happened with such obvious words that I doubted at first as to whether I need them in my set at all. After this reverse translation test I finally understood that my vocabulary is not 6000 words as I thought before; because when it comes to speaking, vocab shrinks so hard that it can reach roughly a level of 500-1000 words. So, starting from yesterday I learn the most popular words that I knew before, but now I only try to translate from my own language to the target language. And in couple months I’m gonna compare the results. God bless those who managed to read to this point! :)

Developing leadership skills The process of working on yourself should not be bothering or boring. Try to do it more like a game. You could draw, or make a list. Use your imagination. For instance, you could prepare a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. It brings a great picture of where are you at this point of time, what can you work on and what can you use as a competitive advantage and develop even further. After you understood what your weaknesses are - do not concentrate on them. Instead, develop a plan to work on the weaknesses in order to make it less threatening to your overall performance. After that, make an emphasize on your strengths, make them even more powerful in order to appreciate existing opportunities. But at any time just remember that Rome wasn't built for one day. And so is your character. Be patient. It is better to work on yourself during one hour daily than struggle for twelve hours once a week and promote a laziness six days a week. Remember that actions create habits, habits create character and character creates destiny.

If you ever planned to visit Russia, do it now! Before the well-known events that happened in Ukraine and Crimea, Russia was quite a stable country where the US dollar cost 40 Rubles. However after the Ukraine crisis came, several countries imposed economic sanctions on Russian economy and oil prices fallen dramatically over relatively short period of time. And since one-third of Russian income is dependent on sale of oil, the economy suffered a major crush which resulted in decision taken by the National Bank to devalue national currency. After a couple months US dollar cost 60, 70 and even 80 Rubles. As the time passes, the government managed to stabilize the economy and now the cost of 1 dollar fluctuated from 63 to 67 Rubles. Now imagine that 3 years ago you came to Russia. You go to Starbucks and buy yourself a coffee, say a latte. The price is 240 Rubles. Divided by 40 Rubles will result in 6 bucks. Then you go and book a hotel room, which costs you 4000 Rubles (100 bucks). Then you decide to see a movie, which varies from 400 to 1200 Rubles (10-30 bucks), and then you go to a bar to watch your favorite football team game, also may vary from 500 to 5000+ Rubles (12-120 bucks) and so on and so forth. The situation is very different for you now. Imagine that you do same stuff: coffee is now 4 bucks instead of 6. Hotel is 60 instead of 100. Movie is from 6 to 20 bucks instead of 10-30. Bar is from 7 to 70 bucks instead of 12-120. In other words, everything has changed, everything is cheaper. I have to admit though the prices in Rubles are not completely the same as it was 3 years ago, but an increase of prices is not comparable to the drop of the value of our currency. Therefore, in any case – you will win in terms of money. And why exactly did I say “do in now?”. Well, the problem is that 2018 year may bring some surprises and instability to Russia. Unfortunately, not everyone in the world is happy with the current rulers in Kremlin and they may try to destabilize the situation like they did in Ukraine and like they tried to do in Russia in 2011 (fortunately for us, they failed). That is why I believe the situation may become a little bit unpredictable and you will want to reduce your risks. Now, as the situation is quite stable and the currency is quite cheap it is time for you to consider visiting our country. You will be certainly welcomed. At least we all hope that World Cup will be very peaceful, successful and pleasant for everyone across the globe as were Olympic Games in Soschi.

First little step When I had written a first little article on italki website, I decided that I need to write at least a small article daily in order to practice my writing skills. I decided to choose a small topic every day and write at least a couple paragraphs for each topic. But after some time I realized that I just can’t figure out a proper subject to discuss. I spent the whole day trying to choose at least one thing that I can write about, but the only thought that came to my mind was just describing all that confusion happening in my head and this is exactly what I am doing right now. Fortunately, I recently realized that the way I learned the language all these years was not complete and I practiced only one aspect of the language and completely forgot about the other. Few years ago I decided that if I would watch tons of TV series and will endlessly listen to podcasts, my foreign language proficiency will boost noticeably, but luckily after just 30 years of my life (:)) I understood that I was wrong. So now I have roughly another 30-35 years (if the God will allow me such a generous lifespan) to finally get my language skills to more fluent levels where I would not need a long pauses trying to remember the word I wanted to say, or figuring out how to say something grammatically correct and when I just can express my own thoughts casually even with some level of accent and with improper intonation. And this is one of the first steps toward that goal. If I can’t fly towards my goal, I will drive; if I can’t drive – I will run; if I can’t run – I will walk; if I can’t walk – I will crawl; and if I can’t crawl – I will lay towards my goal. Thank you to those who can correct me on this.

Myths about Russia

I was spending a holiday on Bali and every time I met a person and told them that I'm from Russia, they asked me "Whether it is cold in Russia now?" (It was +25+30 in Moscow at that moment).

Do YOU also believe that Russia is a place where it is always dark, cold and snowy?

What other ridiculous myths about Russia do you believe in, like little drunk bears walking across the streets with a bottle of vodka? :)

Why I can't speak English Part 2 This thought blown my mind away for a little and I said to myself, okay, my vocabulary is around 6000 words, but obviously, it includes both most popular words and less popular ones. What if I learn exactly TOP 5000 of the most popular words and will master using them so perfectly so that I don’t need a single second trying to translate the word in my head. I thought this way I could finally have a major progress in the way I speak. This idea deprived me of a sleep. I started gathering the set of Top-5000 most popular words, avoiding 100500% obvious words, like mother, father, cat, dog, etc. Then I made a little test. All words seemed perfectly familiar to me, I needed no time memorizing them, but! When I tried a reverse translation test (from my language to target language), I faced so much troubles with the very easiest words that just completely blown me away. And all this happened with such obvious words that I doubted at first as to whether I need them in my set at all. After this reverse translation test I finally understood that my vocabulary is not 6000 words as I thought before; because when it comes to speaking, vocab shrinks so hard that it can reach roughly a level of 500-1000 words. So, starting from yesterday I learn the most popular words that I knew before, but now I only try to translate from my own language to the target language. And in couple months I’m gonna compare the results. God bless those who managed to read to this point! :)

Why I can't speak English Part 1 A couple days ago, I had a major breakthrough in understanding why I cannot speak a foreign language, in my case – English. I spent 25 years learning English words, but the way I did it was purely for being able to translate from English to Russian. Read any “top 10 secret ways of learning English” article; they say: listen podcasts, read newspapers, watch movies with subtitles… However, the problem is that these means cannot help you to learn speaking, because all these means only practice your ability to understand and translate. And this is exactly what I did my whole life. There was always a very thoughtful idea, which I never comprehend sufficiently. Sometimes you encounter the idea that you do not need to know every single word of the target language, instead, certain number of most popular words is quite enough to be able to speak. However, my understanding of this idea was that knowing 300-500 words would enable you to ask directions, to order meal, etc but not more. Fortunately, I realized that this idea is much more deep and meaningful. Recently I bumped into an interview from a Bloomberg journalist who had a live stream with a studio, talking about G20 event and I listened to both the journalist and an anchorman very carefully. What I realized amazed me. They used unbelievably simple words, which I would describe as Top-500 [of the most used words in English] in best case, maybe Top-1000.

It's the nice weather Could you please explain me why "It's THE nice weather" is not correct grammatically? If I'm not mistaken, the correct form is "It's nice weather", but I wonder why exactly. I know that weather is uncountable, but still, we say "THE weather is good", don't we?

What doea "Screamer" mean in this sentence (football article) It's the dream of every amateur footballer - hearing Martin Tyler describe the moment your screamer hits the back of the net before seeing Gary Neville pore over your piledriver at his touchscreen.