This page will tell you why the overwhelming majority of those Russians in America don't speak English. And also why the native speakers of English are utterly
useless for the Russian learners of English.
Hi, I'm Olga. I'm now on my way over to Las Vegas.
Сегодня 25 августа 2010 года. Я, Ольга Синенко соавтор курса разговорного английского языка "Breakthrough" the Cool! для русских, только что вернулась из США города Сан Диего, где проходила курс повышения квалификации. По окончании курса Государственным Университетом Сан Диего мне был выдан международный сертификат на право преподавания английского как второго языка. Ниже после документа я написала рассказ на английском о том, как плохо живётся многим русским иммигрантам в Америке. Прожив там несколько лет, они до сих пор не могут правильно и бегло говорить на английском. Я постаралась указать основные причины и проблемы, с которыми постоянно сталкиваются наши русские, изучающие английский как с носителями английского, так и с русскими преподавателями. Для пользы посетителей (читателей) я также перевела свой рассказ на русский язык.
Russians in Vegas:
Перейти на русский перевод: As part of my adventurous American escape, I often found myself in most incredible places within an incredibly short span of time. On one 112F sunny morning after a ride all through the Mexican Desert, I got dropped off a racer’s truck in the main street of Las Vegas without any place to go and no one around to share the Friday night coming up. If you have at least a vague notion of what Vegas looks like, you will probably understand why I stood there kind of petrified for a while just gaping around like a curious baby. The insanity of the world quadrupled by consumer obsession of the rich hardly sounds to be enough to describe my impressions. I left my things at the first hotel that turned up on the way and plunged into kilometers of casinos, restaurants, malls, wild animals in glass cages, pools, Greek statures and hotel rooms. Sometimes, you can find these under the same roof all at once. This is Vegas!!!
Перейти на русский перевод: Shortly after, I ran into a couple of Russians handing out some leaflets under the scorching sun. Much to my shame, they made me out very quickly. “Russians always look lost”, one of them told me, which is not far from being true. Most Russians DO look out of place anywhere even if they immigrated a score of years ago generally because of their poor language skills. And they also tend to go crazy in a complicated philosophical way being unable to take things easy the way most Americans do. I remember meeting a Jewish retired journalist from Russia who was pulling a dirty carrier bag along the street. As he was telling me about his numerous degrees, houses and bank accounts he owned waving a stack of dog-eared correspondent’s IDs, I had only one thing on my mind. “What a nut”, I thought, and “I’d better find a way to escape now”. Although, I knew that bullshit might be all true. The guy was crazier than the Mad Hatter and the Rabbit put together. It goes without saying that his attempts to say something in English were hilarious.
Перейти на русский перевод: One of my new Vegas acquaintances, Sergey, had immigrated 11 years ago. They were namesakes, so he will go by “Fatty”. Funny to think but the first thing he confessed as we were sitting at a bar later that night was that “There is nothing to talk about with Americans”. Yeah, we all feel comfortable believing in the good old cliches about the shallowness of America and the deepness of thought of the so-called “Russian eggmass that's intelligentsia”. But what he failed to understand was that communication is a mutual thing and language is an intimate inseparable part of communication. Despite all your willingness to keep the talk going, you won’t be able to communicate with anyone who SOUNDS like a retard, which Fatty did every time we found ourselves in company with native speakers. "Sorry, dude, I did not want to upset you, but I actually have American friends here," I said to him. "We meet several times a week and it’s not because I have pretty eyes or a cute ass, but because we have something to SAY to each other."
Перейти на русский перевод: The other guy, the skinny Sergey, had retained the most loathsome drinking habits from Russia. I mean you can grab a couple of beers before you drink your bottle of whiskey, and even another two after you get totally blacked out. But, Jesus, don’t do it the night before you have to go to work and curse the day you were born. Seriously, the guy was too much fun to watch. When he got wasted, he started complaining that he had been staying in the States for 3 years but could not understand anything people around him said every day. Well, what can I say? He should have paid more attention to his studies back home in Russia. He had listened to a lot of dialogue on-line, admittedly, watched movies and attempted to learn some vocabulary. But it didn’t seem to work much. “How do you test your students and find out their level?” he asked me. Of course, it was a perfect situation to come up with the easiest “Five Tenses Knowledge Test” that we have used in teaching for more than 10 years now. I told him that he would fail to translate the third sentence in a small oral test, which I was about to offer him right on the spot.
Перейти на русский перевод: What I had in mind was to ask him to translate the following few sentences into English:
Я делаю это каждый день. – Сначала я делаю это, потом это.
Я иду туда сейчас. – Я иду туда завтра.
Перейти на русский перевод: After many failed attempts, he finally suggested his last version, which, as you can clearly see, was not quite correct again: “I’m doing it each day.” So this Sergey fella gave up even faster than I would have ever expected. I briefly explained him the Cases of the Five Confusing English Tenses. He looked amazed and puzzled. Somehow, nobody had put the easiest systemized thing in his head so he even didn’t know they existed after 3 years of living in America. Later, I told him one more thing, “Look at those guys over there”, indicating a bunch of Russians and added, “They are your friends. You live with them, you speak Russian to them every day and you watch TV in Russian. THEY are your problem as you are living in a stuffy world of your own, not in America. Get away from them, get yourself an American girlfriend, do something to spend more time with native speakers!" But this takes us right to the catch-22 we started with. Nobody wants to communicate with a retard, they have nothing to say to you and so you are forced into staying in a world of your own.
San Diego State University
My insight from a rather heated kitchen:
Перейти на русский перевод: When someone tells me an opinion, which can be generally summarized as either “It is white.” or what’s more human “It is black.”, I always think of the guy on the corner of 5th and Market St holding a sign “Deli tacos” or whatever it is. He is there almost all day, dog-tired, sweating, with lowered shoulders and expression of fatigue clearly written on his face. Hell, no! I don’t want to be in his shoes, never in my life!
You go a few blocks farther on and there’s another one. The whole street is rocking with crazy sounds of the rap records from his half-broken boombox. He would practice breakdance elements with his sign, or spin it on his finger, or just dance and grin at you, and he would say, “Hey bro!” to everyone on the street and hit on every single pretty girl passing by.
These people are there every day, never late. Each of them does his job well and gets his humble wages. Neither of them is wrong. It IS the most unrewarding, stupid and fatiguing job in the world. And it CAN be different.
Перейти на русский перевод: That’s exactly what I think a lesson may be like. Unfortunately, as I look back at my first teaching experience, I tended to be the first guy more often. There is no "remedy teaching method" we must necessarily abide by. The quest for the one and only technique with the stages of Grammar-Translation Method, Audio-Lingual, Total Physical Response and Natural Approach is history now. We live in the era of DESIGNER techniques, which means the CREATIVITY that I, like most Russian teachers, had lacked so much in my class. With our mentality we often fail to admit that learning can and should be fun. Time is ripe for being flexible and combining different approaches where I used to abide by the rather dated Grammar-Translation Method only because it was an easier way. Well, this is one thing the natives at San Diego State University were aware of. Variety, variety and variety was the motto for lesson activities and plans. I also side with them when they say the materials should be relevant to the students’ needs, authentic and up to date. All this really helps to transform language learning into language acquisition, which in most cases are two different things. Really, you can get A’s on your tests but be unable to bounce the easiest questions like “What’s going on? – Not too much.” “For here or to go? – For here.” “How are you doing? – Good.”
Перейти на русский перевод: This sounds like I admire native teachers and their approaches. I do, in a certain way. Then why did they admit foreign students in the program originally designed for natives? One of the first things the academic director told everybody on the first day of the course was: “Non-natives are better teachers than we are.” First of all, non-natives know the intricacies of the language, the differences between English and their mother tongue. They can explain these things far better since they have gone all the way on the long road of learning themselves; they know all blind alleys, twists and turns from the very start. And now let’s move into this notion of “native teacher”. The duration of the program I attended was four weeks. Most of the students in the group were not teachers or had very little teaching experience. They were young and nice and they were fascinated by the idea of teaching worldwide. Besides, they’ve long dreamed to travel across the globe. The course taught them a lot of great things, which would make the lessons fun. But don’t you think it takes a lot more time and effort to become a professional than just a four-week course? What is there in store for those guys when they find a job in Spain, Brazil, Turkey or Russia – any of their dream destinations?
Перейти на русский перевод: From many conversations with various teachers, I understood that they had much difficulty even at the stage of getting there. “We have to be constantly applying to get a job these days”, one teacher in mid-forties told me. “We can’t do a lot of things our fathers used to and our children will have a harder time. I don’t know where I will have to be going tomorrow and if they are still going to want me there when I arrive.” In many cases, the working conditions also leave much to be desired. The school management might want the teachers to handle groups of twenty people, put together lesson plans an hour before class with no textbook. The latter is, by the way, the choice of the management, too, and not the teacher who presumably should know his students better. Are the students aware of it? Apart from their wish to have fun, their objective is mastering the language within a reasonable period of time. They want an effective textbook, smaller groups and one-to-one conversations with the teacher. Something they can’t get because of the abovementioned reasons. What they hear are numerous excuses like English is an international language, therefore, they shouldn’t strive for near-native fluency and pronunciation but try to achieve mutual intelligibility while speaking. There also exists the theory that students should speak to each other and not to the teacher in order to hear different accents because the level of the language produced by the student talking to other students and the student talking to the teacher is allegedly the same. In other words, the number of mistakes will be the same. It might be true if the teacher does not have time for corrections in large groups, mistakes must really pile up either way.
Перейти на русский перевод: All these were just my observations on the ground. It is always up to the student to arrive at certain conclusions and choose the right way of learning. I only hope that this article might possibly help many Russian learners re-evaluate their approach to studying and avoid numerous common mistakes that they are likely to make.
P.S. I wish everyone to find his or her own way of mastering English as fast as possible, but you should bear in mind that nothing will help you; neither lessons of fun nor the best teachers or textbooks unless you start working harder than hardest on your own time. In other words, you can be always taught, but you'll never get that far if you don't learn by yourself.
Wow! It feels awesome being in Las Vegas.
I've been here, too. LA is a cornucopia of dazzling lights and great things.
Tell you what, man. This Las Vegas place is real sick! You gotta visit it.
В основном наивные лентяи часто спрашивают: "Можно ли выучить разговорный английский язык, если поехать в Англию или Америку, предварительно не уча английский в
России?" Ржачно конечно, но фактически они просто хотят "притулиться" к носителям и ожидают, что произойдет лингвистическая диффузия, типа, если дерьмо положить
рядом с золотом, то первое обязательно превратится во второе. Оставим это грубое, но доходчивое сравнение. Ответ, однако, заключается в следующих двух строчках
известного певца Вилли Токарева и нашего соотечественника, который долгие годы жил и живёт на Брайтон Бич в США и там таких наших русских тьма-тьмущая:
"Абрам, скажу тебе по честному, я не фурыкаю (= каклякаю) по-местному."
Русские в Америке SDSU, Поездка путешествие в Америку CША Штаты Сан Диего Лос Анджелес Анхелес Анжелес Лас Вегас Las Vegas Los Angeles San Diego, Olga Sinenko Ольга Синенко, международный преподаватель учитель репетитор методист переводчик английского языка как иностранного, Am TEFL TESL обучение преподавание разговорного английского частные индивидуальные груповые уроки Москва Россия СНГ Украина Казахстан Америка Англия Канада уроки английского для начинающих средних продвинутых
На этой странице вы узнаете, почему подавляющее большинство русских в Америке не говорят на английском языке. А также, почему носители английского языка
совершено безполезны для русских учеников, изучающих английский язык.
(I do it every day. - First I do this and then I do this.)
(I’m going there now. – I’m going there tomorrow.)
Три варианта перевода на разговорный английский Александра Газинского:
Abram, you wanna my straight talk?
I can barely rap like the local folk.
или:
Abram, you're gonna get a shock.
Like them locals I cannot talk.
или:
Abram dear, that's real true.
I ain't jaw like the natives do.
Так что любой иностранный язык нужно учить. И учить очень много! Вот что сказал мне мой американский друг Фрэнк:
"The success of mastering English is directly proportional to the amount of both time and effort (that) you put into learning English."
(= Успех овладения английским языком прямо пропорционален как количеству времени, так и усилий, которые вы вкладываете в изучение английского.)
И это аксиома! На этом сайте мы предлагаем настоящим ученикам настоящие учебные материалы разговорного английского языка. И у вас есть выбор:
Вы просматриваете, как можно больше страниц данного сайта с целью изучения учебного материала и становитесь нашим платным очным или заочным учеником.
Советуем начать с этой страницы. Или вы пробуете самостоятельно
бесплатно учить Урок 0 для начинающих. В любом случае желаем вам найти самый лучший курс разговорного
английского языка!
Необходимая лексика, чтобы вы смогли правильно понимать английские варианты этих двух строчек песни Вилли Токарева в 3-х вариантах:
1. wanna = want to – хотеть
2. straight talk - прямой/откровенный разговор
3. Wanna my straight talk? - Хочешь скажу напрямую (= прямо)?
4. barely = hardly = scarcely - вряд ли, едва ли, с трудом
5. to rap = to jaw = to mouth - болтать, калякать = фурыкать, вякать
6. like the (= them) local folk(s) – как местный народ
7. you’re gonna get a shock = you’re going to get a shock - у тебя будет шок = ты будешь шокирован
8. like them - как они
9. (the) locals = natives - местные, носители английского
10. I can't talk - я не могу говорить
11. that's real true = it’s quite true- Это действительно правда
12. I ain't jaw = I don't jaw - Я не калякаю (= Я не фурыкаю)
13. like natives do (= speak = talk) – как говорят местные
