Hi guys, Happy New Year! I have decided to make this post. I am currently looking for partners to set up a language exchange in Russian and English. Here’s what I have in mind in terms of beginner activities for Russian and long-term activities for English. Feel free to PM me. Russian:
1. Student and Ander will create the Excel vocabulary lists. Student will attain 100% KPI (i.e. Student will be able to look at the English word and say it in Russian (with the Russian word covered by a piece of paper); about 15 words per each session; all of these words are widely used).
2. Andrew will check the list at the start of each session.
3. Andrew and Student will practice grammar matrixes(major tenses, cases structures) for 45 minutes through
1) robot translations,
2) quick stories.
(1) robot translations – we will prep the 3 matrixes for the 3 tenses; I will tell you the sentence in English and you will have to say it in Russian, like “I will call you. He called you. They will meet you. Did you meet him”. This is not very invigorating and creative, but it works,
(2) quick stories – Andrew says a series of sentences “My friend has a dog. My friend’s name is John. He lives in Moscow.” Then Andrew asks a question “What’s the name of my friend?” The Student gives his or her answer.” This activity helps automate the skills of using the core matrixes.).
4. A and Student will just talk stuff for 15 minutes. (Student will use the lingvodictionary (to be clarified) whenever needs immediately at the lesson. After the lesson Student will refer to the browser history and copy to the excel file any words that she wants to).
5. We can schedule a 60-minute session either in your morning or your evening.
6. I basically don’t make any comments in English, coz it takes time out of the lesson and takes time out of the 3 activities above.
7. We can do these 3 activities for 1 month or something like that. During that time, you will have already included in your excel like 300-400 words (which are very popular, since we only the popular ones). We can start doing something else, maybe using activities 2 from the English section or some similarly structured activities. Probably, you can start reading some children’s stories, from which you will see an influx of the new layer of vocabulary.
8. As you can see all of the points are driven by 1) my belief in vocabulary beefing up, 2) my belief in matrixes beefing up. This is what I believe in and it kinda works pretty well. I had a student. She said at lesson 1 that she didn’t speak any English. We went through the three activities for like 1 month. At the end of the month, she could say off hand something like “I will call him tomorrow. We will talk about the car. I want to buy a car. Bye.” Imho, it’s pretty good. It’s not that natural, but she can communicate. In an ideal situation, she would have said something like that “I’m going to call him tomorrow and talk to him about the car. I like the offer, so I might actually buy that car. See you.”. But she was “no-level” only 1 month ago, so I viewed as a success.
English
1. (about 30 minutes) Student will prep 5-10 questions for Andrew to furnish answers to concerning current affairs (preferably not Russian, but US, EU, etc., coz Russian politics sucks and It’s like Chavez’ Venezuela).
Examples of questions:
1) What’s going on with the North Korean nuclear program?
2) What were the main points of Obama’s decision on guns?
3) What’s going in in Oregon? What do the protestors want?
4) What’s the difference between Clinton and Sanders?
5) Republicans’ programs.
6) Difference between Republicans and Democrats.
(5) and 6), naturally, are very broad ones, so I might split them into pieces to be covered in a couple of weeks. You can just draft such questions after watching some TV or something like that).
2. (about 30 minutes) We can use these questions and points and discuss some topics. http://www.eslgold.com/speaking/talking_topics.html
Here’s an example: 1. http://www.eslgold.com/speaking/topic_hobbies.html Bottom Line:
So, basically, through English activity 1) you will have more coverage on the current events, lol, 2) you will only have to speak and use whatever phrases you want to. Just wanted to make clear, no prep is required for either of the 3 activities.
