Irina Lutsenko

St Petersburg is not the kind of city you should visit for a day. But Ekaterina Kachalova did and lived to tell the tale. Her conclusion is "If you’re saving up on comfort and time, your impressions will also come at a discount."  This is yet another awesome post written in my " Write for Real: Blogging in English " course. Enjoy the post and scroll down to find links to more. ✽✽✽ Save up on comfort and time, but not on impressions - that was my motto whenever the thought of hopping on the Sapsan train to St Pete became ripe enough for me to reap it. The pinnacle of that particular trip in July 2019 was meant to become "The Legend of Love” by the Mariinsky ballet. Staying true to my motto, I booked a one-day round-trip ticket with an intention to cover all the bases - to see everything that there was to see in one day. The high-speed train departed from Moscow at an ungodly hour, but what I sacrificed in terms of deep sleep and sound mind, I hoped to make up ...

In exam preparation, there are three main stages of learning to write - and all of them address different needs. 1. Introduction This stage is the first step you take right after you learn how to write a certain task type. You think your writing is awful. You have lots of questions. You get a lot of comments of all shapes and sizes. At this stage, make your peace with the fact that the first two-three writing answers will be roadkill - they hurt to look at, but you can’t save them, keep moving. There are two important things to keep in mind here: - These two-three awkward first answers are probably inevitable - you can’t really jump directly to smooth and beautiful ones. But you need to go through writing those first awkward ones simply to get used to the tasks. - The awkward first answers are the case for any new type of writing. In IELTS prep, you will have two-three awkward line graphs answers, then two-three awkward agree-disagree essays, then two-three awkward bar charts answ...