Irina Lutsenko

With language, it’s use it or lose it . Language skills, speaking in particular, go rusty in a flash. Teachers are not an exception here; let’s face it, teachers’ speaking skills deteriorate too (for a variety reasons that I won’t go into now). Sitting around and complaining is a tempting, but counterproductive approach to solving this problem. In this post, I am going to talk about the solution my colleague and I came up with to stop our speaking skills from going rusty. … It all started on a gloomy, hopeless, rainy November afternoon from Dasha’s message. The message went like this, “How about starting our very own speaking club? We could meet once a week (Skype, of course) and just talk about stuff. What do you say?” I jumped in excitement and immediately replied, “ I’m in! ” We discussed the possible time and scheduled a session for Sunday 10 am. You are now probably wondering who the hell Dasha is. Dasha, officially known as Daria Maslovskaya, is a top-notch English teache...

This post is inspired by the guest post Nadya Borisova wrote for me  “Academic IELTS without a degree in linguistics” ( Part 1  and  Part 2 ). She wrote the whole thing, while I got to comment and edit. Editing is a critical, yet underestimated part of writing. In this post, I want to give this part the attention it deserves and talk about how Nadya and I collaborated on editing her post. The guest post idea Being a teacher, I write about exams and language learning from a teacher perspective (naturally). I claim to know the right thing to do and demand that my students do what I say. But my students don’t always do what I demand or recommend. One reason could be that, as a teacher, I am not always able to put myself in my students’ shoes and adequately assess their needs. Additionally, to be brutally honest, IELTS 9 (my score) is out of reach for most students, so my success story might not be particularly inspiring. Most test takers or potential test takers ...

Writing and Speaking. Resources. This is the second part of the guest post by my student Nadya Borisova.  I hope you enjoy it as much as the first part .  Now let’s talk about the active parts: Writing and Speaking. Writing Here comes the tough one. Last time I got 7.0 for Writing. I used Irina’s help, and I can’t stress it enough, you need a look from another person to tell you what you do right and wrong. In Task 1 the hardest thing for me was to decide what’s important and what’s not. I practiced a lot with Irina, and now I feel more comfortable with distinguishing meaningful information from the less important on the graph or pie chart. The best tip I got for Task 2 is the way you brainstorm ideas. Sometimes I got a topic and I was stuck as I didn’t know what to say. IELTS essay questions are in a formal style, so I tried to think about my arguments and reasons academically, which is, of course, not easy. But then I read about “the cafe techniqu...

Background. Preparation time.  Listening and Reading. This is a guest post from my student Nadya Borisova. Enjoy! Hi there, my name is Nadya Borisova , and I’d like to share my experience in getting 8.0 in IELTS Academic as well as my list of top-5 resources for preparation. My first attempt was in 2014. At that time, I wanted a clear understanding of my level. So I tried a mock IELTS test with no preparation at all, got Overall 5.0, and decided to get better results in a real one. The second test followed two years later. 2014 Listening 7.0 Reading 8.0 Writing 6.5 Speaking 6.5 Overall Band 7.0 2016 Listening 9.0 Reading 9.0 Writing 7.0 Speaking 7.5 Overall Band 8.0 My background Two years ago I worked as an IT recruiter, now I’m a copywriter. I don’t have a university degree in languages, nor did I go to the school focused on English language. I went to an ordinary school with two hours of English a week. Most of the learning af...

If you are one of my students, you probably have heard me say, “There are a lot of grants and competitions out there. Apply for every single one that you you see. Apply, apply, apply.” Well, do I practice what I preach? In this post, I want you to take a look at the results of my applications/ submissions/ competitions and analyze the success to failure ratio. I also want to tell you what I learned from my failures. I certainly hope that my story serves as an inspiration to persist and try, try, try again. Here is my application history over the last years: 2013 IELTS Morgan Terry Memorial Scholarship – failed 2014 Communicative Assessment course –  failed  2014 Russian Language Assistant program in the UK –  failed  2014 Cambridge English Teacher Scholarship –  failed  2014 IELTS Morgan Terry Memorial Scholarship –  failed  2014 Essay Contest “Inspiring Teachers” – partly succeeded (didn’t win, but was shortlisted as a finalist, got ...

Why living in an English-speaking country doesn’t automatically improve your English level and how to make sure it does First, I want to clarify a couple of things. This post is about non-native speakers who go abroad for a longer period than an ordinary tourist trip, for example, to work or study. This post serves to bust the myth “Learning English in my home country isn’t effective anyway. As soon as I get to an English-speaking country, my English level will skyrocket in the blink of an eye.” This post is based on personal experience of living in the USA for a year, so I am going to use English and Russian but the ideas are probably true for other languages and countries too. So why doesn’t it? - You are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of language you are exposed to.  When you arrive, you are instantaneously immersed in English. You speak English to your colleagues, bus drivers, cashiers, and bankers. You read pages of contracts and manuals. You come across ma...

The benefits of participating in 🔹🔹🔹 program are numerous and I am only giving a small portion here. Here goes: - You meet lots of great people. Before you even leave for the USA, you meet your fellow 🔹🔹🔹s from your own country. Applicants go through a rigorous selection process, so the ones that do get selected are intelligent, creative, enthusiastic, and a lot of fun. Then you meet your fellow 🔹🔹🔹s from all over the world. Again, you meet intelligent, creative, enthusiastic, and fun people, but this time there is an added benefit of meeting people from other cultures (around 50 countries all told). You get a chance to see these people dance national dances, wear national clothes, and try authentic home-cooked national foods. The experience just opens your eyes to how fascinating and diverse the world is. - You get first-hand experience of American education from two perspectives: as a teacher and as a student. I did all the mundane things students do – I took...