Irina Lutsenko

Can you make a finger-licking dinner dish out of cauliflower or broccoli? Olga can and is sharing her secret recipe with all of us.  Olga wrote this post in my " Write for Real: Blogging in English " course. I love it because it's a perfect combination of practical and personal: it's a real recipe told through the lens of Olga's sweet personality. ✽✽✽ "I thought you couldn’t even make a decent brew," my cousin said, sipping tea whilst helping herself to a second serving of my signature cauliflower cheese. Actually, I CAN make a nice cup of tea as I had quite an extensive training in all sorts of tea leaves and milk- to-brew ratios when working for my English boss and much more but… There are just certain skills that one wouldn’t casually share. Otherwise you would all be calling me all the time to ask how many lemons to put into a lemon cake. I do sometimes embrace my inner Jamie Oliver, though I am perfectly happy to keep everyone disillusioned abou...

This is a guest post by Timur Khamzin , a programmer who writes and translates poetry in his free time. In this post, he talks about the whys and hows of his hobby. What Timur does is inspiring and mind-blowing. You can find his bilingual poetry and translations in his community on VK  Переводы стихов | Poetry Translations . Choosing poetic form Don’t be hasty to reel back in horror when I tell you it is writing poetry that I refer to in the headline, not reading it (although that can also be a treat). Some of your apprehensions may turn out to be misconceptions, e.g. “only people with special aptitude can write poetry” or “I lack inspiration that is an indispensable ingredient of writing a good poem”. Writing poetry is a skill to be learnt , like driving a car or doing yoga. What makes it particularly enticing for language learners is that it has the fortunate and lasting side-effects of enriching vocabulary, enhancing precision and sense of style. Now, there is writing poetry and...

This is a guest post by  Anna Pakhomova , my C2 Proficiency student whose skillful use of fancy language will completely blow you away. In this post, she shares her story and her tips.    I realize how disgustingly self-assured this sounds, so I’ll just go ahead and burst my own bubble here. In this guest post, graciously suggested by Irina, I’ll try to show the darker, duller and more mundane part of putting together your own personal toolbox (or, more precisely, a warehouse) of fancy lexis. First off, the way I learned most of my so-called “fancy” vocabulary was by being a decidedly lonely kid at school. I was a full package – I wore thick glasses, had braces permanently in, and was too smart for my own good. At that point, reading virtual tons of books and learning English was my super power, my magical shield against the world I didn’t particularly enjoy. It wasn’t that I was bullied – oh, I was unapproachable in my little ivory tower. It’s just that I, as any self-re...

“Can you write about your language learning routine?” This is a question I got from my student Nina. My answer is, “Sure, but I don't really have a routine. It's more of a way of life.” In this post, I want to share my language learning lifestyle. Input First and foremost, I pretty much live my life in English . 99% of my environment (my devices, software, apps, subscriptions, books, videos et cetera et cetera) is in English. I make sure I expose myself to copious amounts of English. Exposure is king. So is noticing. I am always on the lookout for new vocabulary and familiar vocabulary used in new ways. Most of the time I read or watch something I take vocabulary notes. I have a paper notebook and digital notes for that. If I don’t have them on me when I hear a great expression, I jot it down on an old receipt or whatever I can find. My main criterion for choosing what language to take notes of is a very honest answer to these questions, "Would I ever say it t...

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...

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...

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...

This is now my third post about common mistakes Russian learners make in English, so I’ll get straight to the point. 1 Actual problem All these mistakes are actually a serious problem . They travel from generation to generation of learners and are rooted so deeply in their minds that they are almost impossible to weed out. ‘ Actual ’ means real, not imaginary, existing in fact; it does not mean актуальный (=currently important). The adjectives you can use with problem include but are not limited to: serious , growing , major , pressing , and urgent . 2 Big number A large number of mistakes have their roots in translation. Sadly, a large number of people keep learning English through translation even at high levels, so the mistakes persist. A large number of learners pin their hopes on explanations. However, a large number of times explanations are of little help. A large number of repetitions of the correct version is what really helps. (More about the intricacies of nu...

I am thrilled to present a guest post by my student Alisa Chernikova. In this post, she talks about determination to succeed and recommends three great books that will help you get started on your success journey. The post was inspired by the TED talk we watched in class "Grit: The power of passion and perseverance." You, in turn, will be inspired by the post. Macmillan dictionary defines grit as ‘determination to succeed, even in very difficult situations’. Before we dive deeper into how and why, let me ask you this question: Do people really need grit? Personally, I would go with yes. Still, some might say: “Just find your passion in life, and you won’t ever need to bother yourself with such things as grit in the first place!” But in my experience, it’s not that simple. No matter how much you like what you do, you need to be able to do it well. You need to be passionate, perseverant, strong. You need to be gritty! So how does one become gritty? I assume there’s ...

A student once asked me, “ What kind of students do you find difficult? ” I couldn’t reply immediately, but this question lingered in my mind for months. In this post, I want to answer my student's question. First, I’ll give some context. I don’t teach at a state school or a university. I do in-company training and prepare students for international exams. My students take classes voluntarily because they use English at work or because they want to enrol in university programs taught in English. For me, difficult students are people who: don't know what they want. Some students come and say they want IELTS preparation. They don’t know anything about the test, but they think it’s a good idea to have the certificate. Sooner or later they realize they don’t really need it, so they decide they want to work with TED talks because they are sick and tired of coursebooks. But working with TED talks turns out to be harder than working with coursebooks, so they change the...

I didn’t initially plan to write a sequel to my post about common mistakes that Russian learners of English actually make, but the post proved extremely useful. Instead of explaining the mistakes over and over again, I simply gave my students the link and the number of the mistake they kept making. Seeing how well it worked, I’ve decided to put together one more list of common mistakes Russian learners make. The root of all the mistakes below is the direct translation from Russian. Again, the list is based on my personal teaching experience. The order is almost random. #1 Feel yourself good Feel good . If you think about it, isn't ‘yourself’ redundant anyway? Of course, it’s yourself you are talking about, so you don’t need to say it. On top of that, ‘ feel yourself ’ actually means something you probably don’t want to say. Google it. Seriously, do. #2 Weekends Weekend , just one. If you are talking about your last or next weekend, a combination of two days Saturday...

Due to the nature of my job, every once in a while I stumble upon an article about N most common mistakes that learners of English make. I look at them and go, “Who makes these mistakes? Russians certainly don’t.” (For example, Russians don’t confuse your and you’re .) In this post, I want to talk about 8 common mistakes Russian learners actually make. These mistakes persist on different levels, but are not usually addressed in EFL course books. The list is based on my personal teaching experience. The order is random. 1. I with I often ask students “What did you do at the weekend?” and what I hear is “ I with my friends went to the cinema. ” The right way to say something like this is “ My friends and I went to the cinema ,” or “ I went to the cinema with my friends .” In English, the word order is “subject+verb” and prepositional phrases can’t go in the middle. 2. How to say When students don’t know how to say something, they ask me or murmur to themselves “ How t...