Irina Lutsenko

This post is an interview with my friend Olga Kolesnikova . Olga and I went to university together, where we were both trained to be teachers of English. I am now a teacher, as trained. However, Olga decided to pursue a career as a translator and an interpreter. I’ve always been curious to pick Olga's brain about her career path as it is very different from mine despite the same background. In this post, I am asking her my burning questions about her choice and her experience. 1 Tell my readers a bit about yourself. Just like you, I graduated from Pskov Pedagogical University. I worked as a teacher of English there for three years, and I always had a nagging idea that I didn’t have enough life experience to broadcast my ideas and my personality to students. So, I took a step to change it all and leave Pskov for St. Petersburg to become something different. 2 We went to the university together, where we were both trained to become teachers. But you decided to pursue a c...

My colleague Lyudmila Snezhanova asked me to share a book review I wrote when I was preparing for C2 Proficiency (fka CPE). And I thought, “Why don’t I share it with everyone then?” I wrote this review about a year ago about “ The Elements of Eloquence ” by Mark Forsyth, which I was reading at the time. There is no task for it. I wrote it to practise. When I was preparing for CPE, I practised writing in two modes: exam mode and growth mode . In exam mode , my goal was to answer the question meeting the time limit. In growth mode , my goal was to work on my language. In this mode, I prepared a list of phrases and/or structures I wanted to use and tried to use as many of them as possible in my writing. This review is the second version of the original review written in growth mode. ✻✻✻ Given that the title of the book is “The elements of eloquence,” it is no surprise that I bought it and read it from cover to cover, scrutinizing every single line. What self-respecting lan...

My fellow Fulbrighter and a wonderful English teacher Maria Merziapova , when she moved to Moscow was so appalled by the mess that is going on in language schools that she is thinking of going freelance. I’ve been self-employed for several years now, so Maria kept interrogating me about this career path. I decided to take it two steps further: to address her questions and fears in a public post and to invite my amazing colleague Sandra Slivinskaya to join me. Sandra and I wrote our answers completely independently to provide two perspectives. Part 1. My questions. 1. How did you make the decision to leave a steady job and work on your own? Irina I didn't really make this decision. It was a series of small decisions. It always made more sense financially to have my own students rather than work for someone else. At one point I had a full schedule as a self-employed teacher and didn’t need a school. Sandra Well, first of all, after my graduation as a linguist-interpreter...

Aspiring Fulbrighters have recently received good tidings that they have made it to the second round, the most important and stressful part of which is the interview. So I've decided to put together a list of the most helpful interview tips and asked my fellow Fulbrighter Maria Merziapova to join me. We wrote our top tips completely independently so that you could have two different perspectives. Top tips by Irina Lutsenko (Fulbright FLTA, 2015-2016, University of New Haven, Connecticut) #1 Be ready to talk about your application, job/studies, program participation, and plans for the future. To be able to do that: - Read your application again. Chances are you wrote it 3-5 months ago. Trying to remember what you wrote during the interview is a bad idea. - Talk to Fulbright alumni or watch/read about their experience. You will get a better understanding of what the interviewers might be looking for. - Google typical university or even job application questions. T...

I am itching to share a story written by Lyudmila Snezhanova in my Creative Writing Club , which is a project for people who share my passion for writing. Lyudmila wrote an incredible piece based on a highly challenging  prompt : ✦ Choose one of the following idioms and include it in a story that also includes a literal use of one of the figurative words in the idiom. For example, if I were to choose the phrase “at the drop of a hat,” I would also include a hat or someone dropping something. - at the drop of a hat - hit the sack - judge a book by its cover - beat around the bush - steal [someone’s] thunder - the last straw. ✦ Below is her wonderfully-crafted story with all of these idioms in their literal and figurative meaning! Enjoy!  ✽✽✽ Don't judge Abook “Yes,” said Perry Stalker, gripping his new suspenders, slipping from his stomach, and regretting he had feasted on smoked bream and a six pack of beer last weekend. "With our stainless reputation...

This is a guest post by Alisa Chernikova , my student and an English teacher. The post is about working with text and is the third in a series Reflections on "Lexical Grammar" ( a book by Leo Selivan ). Follow the links to read the previous two: 1. Chunks and collocations ; 2. Grammar acquisition . The post contains lots of practical activities we did in class. Alisa dug out some activities I had created long ago and had totally forgotten about. But it turns out I've been following the lexical grammar approach for years without even realizing it. You can give these activities a shot too, btw. The key is at the end of the post.    So we’ve been talking about the lexical approach and lexical grammar in particular. By now we know that chunks and collocations are important both in terms of boosting grammar and vocabulary acquisition. Today let’s have a look at how we can work with text. According to the author, texts are most usually used for the purposes of reading...

This post is an interview with Liubov Vlasova , who is my first student to have taken the computer-delivered IELTS . In this interview, she shares her impressions and the reasons behind her choice. 1 Tell my readers a bit about yourself. My name is Liubov Vlasova. I am an ecologist from Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Today I want to share my experience of taking computer-delivered IELTS, which happened on 7th of May. A couple of months ago I took a very important decision to try to emigrate abroad. I think my professional area is very important today because our environment was totally destroyed the last years, and I hope one day I will do really useful and important job for improving the current situation. According to the media, in foreign countries environmental and particularly ecological engineering are very important and popular branches, which is why I decided to move abroad for achieving my professional and personal goals. 2 Why did you decide to take IELTS? Initia...

This is a guest post by my friend and colleague Vera Novikova . The post is inspired by Philip Warwick’s talk at the NATE conference in St Pete. In this post I would like to share some concerns regarding future employability of millennia generation and a shifting role of an English teacher in particular. Being a devoted sci-fi fan I have to admit that up until recently ideas of a fully automated world seemed rather futuristic and somewhat improbable. Up until recently… when I realized that certain sci-fi future elements have already been here for some time. Most people have already turned into some sort of cyborgs, using their smartphones as an extra part of their body. We have been glued to the screen, scrolling down in social networks, streaming videos, exchanging photos and news, jotting down memos, video phoning, e-buying, reading e-books, blogging, plunging into virtual reality and what not. We have turned into digital residents leaving visible digital footprints wheneve...

IELTS assessment criteria, which are available on the official website , are drowning in myths and stereotypes. When interpreted unprofessionally, they get totally distorted. Some aspects get blown out of proportion and enter the popular consciousness, while others get totally neglected. In this post, I want to look at the ones that are usually overlooked, focusing on bands 7-9. First things first, here are the links to the public version of the assessment criteria: - Speaking ;  - Writing Task 1 ; - Writing Task 2 .  1. Skillfully 2. Naturally  Speaking. Lexical resource 8-9 :  - uses less common and idiomatic vocabulary skillfully , with occasional inaccuracies (8); - uses idiomatic language naturally and accurately (9). For some reason people focus on “idiomatic” and totally ignore “skillfully/naturally.” This results in students memorizing insane lists of idioms and bending over backwards to use them. For one thing, vocabulary memorized with...

This post is an interview with my awesome friend Petr Filippov who lives in Zurich, Switzerland, where he works for Google. He is fluent in English, but doesn't speak a word of German. In this interview he talks about living in a country whose language he doesn't speak. This is my second interview with Petr. Follow this link to read our first interview in which he talks about his experience of living in Ireland and gives advice on learning English . 1 Tell my readers a bit about yourself. I am software engineer from Russia. I moved to Ireland about 3 years ago, when got a job in Microsoft. Ireland is nice place to live, but when I decided to change my job, it turned out that Google doesn't have SWE vacancies in Dublin, so I had to move. Finally I moved to Zurich at the beginning of December 2018. 2 Were you nervous about moving to a German-speaking country? Not so much, but I considered it as a disadvantage when had thoughts about the step. I am not extrovert...

The competition for the Fulbright FLTA program is currently in progress. As a proud participant, I’ve written extensively about my experience (see the links at the end of the post). But I realized that one important piece of the puzzle was missing, so I decided to add that piece. In this post, I want to describe what happens before the program starts and give some recommendations on what to do along the way. Disclaimer: This post is based on my Fulbright FLTA experience (2015-16). I suspect the process is more or less the same every year, but please always check everything with official sources and program officers. Application So the competition has been announced. The deadline is on 1 June. It might look like plenty of time, but if there is one single most important tip I can give it is: start preparing now. The first step is writing essays. I wrote three: Objectives and motivations (1274 words); Sharing your culture (924 words); Teaching language of nomination (463 w...