Irina Lutsenko

Teachers are the worst students. They judge, question, and find faults. Whenever I'm taught, I do too. I'm also choosy and I have high standards. It's hard to win me over as a student. Not impossible though. In this post, I want to share why I like my yoga teacher. 1. Her class is one continuous flow. The class is one long uninterrupted exercise. She always knows what to do next. I take it as a sign of confidence and experience. The reason I value it is it allows me to stay fully focused for 90 minutes. 2. The exercises are in the right order. I actually don’t know the right order, but even to me the order makes sense. There is always a warm-up and a cool-down. Some exercises are meant to prepare us for other, more complicated exercises later in class. The difficulty of exercises grows gradually. This is how any learning works. This is also the reason the class is easy to survive. 3. Her instructions are clear and meticulous. Instructions in yoga are particularl...

Tell me if it sounds familiar: “There must be something wrong with me. I must have Alzheimer's. I forget vocabulary!” I hear something like that on a regular basis. Unfortunately, vocabulary is not learnt once and for all. It’s normal to forget it. In this post, I want to talk about how not to. The post is aimed at high level learners whose vocabulary is large, but they feel like they are losing it. My strong recommendation is: always assume you might forget any vocabulary at any time. With this in mind, take the steps below to prevent vocabulary loss. Part 1. Lay the groundwork. Step 1. Record the word. Write it down in your notebook or on an old receipt. Type it. Repeat the word out loud five times. Record the word in some form. If you don’t, consider it gone. Step 2. Explore the word. A. When I said, “Record the word,” I actually meant, “Record the whole phrase or sentence that the word was used in.” The words around your target word will help you recall it when y...