11 October 2013

11 October 2013

Today, I got up, got dressed, and had a breakfast of Kasha before walking to my Russian class. Today, we went over the case used when possession is indicated – the something of someone – which is genitive. We also got some new tongue twisters. V said that I had a very good Russian pronunciation when I said them. I can now say that “I miss my family” in Russian, which is a case and a few words from “I’m bored.” We also learned that to make most verbs into their participle, all we need to do is take off the infinitive and add the “ya” sounds.

After that, we went over ordinal numbers, which change depending on the gender of the noun that is being described. Luckily, there is only one irregular – and it only changes for one gender. We then asked and answered questions about dates to practice them: what day is today? tomorrow? yesterday? We then went over our daily routine.

We played a game yesterday that plays with our short term memory, as we have to say what the people before us said. V starts with “First, I wake up,” and we have to keep the day going. The next person says “first, I wake up,” and gives us the next thing, which the rest of the group builds on. I keep being the last one in the circle, which means I say 5 things before adding my new one. Then, we do it again. We usually end the cycle with 11 or 12 things. In order to give hints as to what was said, we have created expansive hand gestures to mime the actions. Personally, they distract me, as I normally talk with my hands, so making gestures specific to the subject is a bit distracting. It’s good speaking and conjugating practice, though.

After that, we had a brief break, so we were able to have a small snack. After our break, we walked across the hall to S.’s flat, where we had an a Community project check in. We have decided to do a project with the end result of creating materials that make learning grammar fun. The vice-principal specifically said that they were looking for cartoons, so we are thinking about creating an easy-to-use video playlist (YouTube is our friend), as well as some of our own dialogues, worksheets, activities, comic strips, all in a lesson plan manual. Now, we have to create an action plan, where we divvy up what we need to do in the next few weeks.

We then had our week debrief, where we went over our thoughts about the classes that we taught, and if we had any suggestions for our cluster-mates about their next class. We also went over what we have to do starting next week, starting with English club. Many of the older forms weren’t present for Wednesday’s meeting, so we’re rescheduling for Mondays, and expecting a 60-some person turnout. We then went over our Tech schedule for the upcoming week, and discussed that we need to start teaching more classes, and we can observe pretty much any class. We then broke for lunch and more Russian.

After lunch, we went back to Russian, where we got some of our home task for the weekend – self-assessment form, class assessment forms, and an open-book test. Then, we went over our homework. We were supposed to memorize what we’d written as for our daily routine, but no one did. Personally, I consider it a small victory if I can remember the correct conjugation.

While going over our home tasks, we learned that Russian has two aspects. An aspect in this case is a verb that is only used in the perfect or the imperfect. If you want to say that you bought some bread, it’s a different verb than if you want to buy some bread. We had written sentences that used “on this day of the week, I will do/do/did blank.” We read our sentences in English, and then had a cluster-mate translate them. For home task, we had been asked to ask our host family their favourite day of the week, as well as their birthday. We then presented our findings with “I cooked with my host mom and I learned that… her favourite day of the week is Friday, because she doesn’t have to work on Saturday.” Yes, Saturday is in a different case, and therefore spelled differently… We also presented when they were born.

After that, we went over the seasons, and learned how they change when you say “in July,” for example. We then said what our favourite season is, and answered what we liked about another season. We then formed sentences with the very simple future – I will be doing blank next week/next month/in a year/in two years. To help with that, we read a dialogue and then made up our own, where we had to adjust the dialogue to match what we were saying (subject, location, time, date). My brain decided to stop recognizing written Russian for a few minutes, so I mispronounced the easy words. And correctly pronounced the 5 syllable word, which didn’t-follow-conventions. We learned a few new polite phrases (“have fun” and “I wish you success at work”) as well as learning that in spoken Russian, the “I” form is understood when the verb is conjugated. And that “I will go to” is a different verb than the ones that we have already learned for “to go.” After that, we quickly talked about the weather. Which means that I can now make elevator small talk I Russian… It was pushing time to go, so we only covered the really important ones – sunny, hot, cold, snow, rain, and wind. The words are in our manual. We were then assigned more home task, some of which is to look over Unit 4, which is in the next manual. So, each manual only takes us 3 weeks to cover. They’re 200+ pages…

After that, we had a few minute break, before having our safety and security session, which was on how to avoid becoming a victim of petty crime. We learned things like blend in, don’t put your wallet in your backpack or back pocket, avoid being distracted, and be on the look out for scams. We were told to make sure that we had the numbers for cab companies, as it is much better to pay the fare than it is to walk alone (or even in groups) after night fall in big cities.

We then covered drinking – there is a different drinking culture here. Most people don’t go to pubs or bars, instead they drink at home. Women usually drink wine, which is good, as there is a lot of homemade vodka available on the market. Some of which, apparently, lives up to its reputation as paint stripper. There are also culturally acceptable ways to turn down more drinks, which include everything from nursing a drink all night to turning the offer around, and suggesting that the person asking you to take the shot take the shot.

After that, we had our cross-cultural session, where we talked about culture shock. There are phases of culture shock, as with every sort of transition. If you are aware of the stages of transition, as well as the symptoms of the stages of transition, you will have a much easier time adapting and integrating. We discussed strategies for dealing with culture shock. We discussed some moments that we have had of culture shock, and how we could begin to adapt. We then went over our schedule for the upcoming week. We’re going to Kyiv this week, as well as going to Petrovski for a PC Seminar.

After that, we helped V clean her flat – swept the floors and cleaned the kitchen – before heading back. One of my cluster-mates five year old host-sister contracted chicken pox, so she’s a little worried about how easy she will be to be around for the next few days. We all said that she could come and meet our host-families if she needed a break.

After that, I walked back, changed into more comfortable clothes, had dinner (borshch), and started in on my home task. I did a fair amount of it; I wrote up my observation report, my post-teaching report, filled in the correct forms in our TEFL manual, and started on my Russian. I worked for 27 songs, on my playlist, which is several hours, on translation and answering questions about a short text. I have one more left to do. I also spent some time looking at the “teach yourself to write in cursive in Russian” manual. I’m going to have to learn how to read Russian cursive, as that is what is taught in schools, and what my students are likely to be reading.

After that, I had tea with my host family, and watched a bit of a TV show: something about dancing. I saw two contestants, one who moved on to the next round, and one who was still facing elimination. It made about as much sense in Russian as the same show would have in English, but it was entertaining.

After tea, I was able to spend some time online, and video-chat with my parents, which was awesome. I got some great advice, heard some funny anecdotes about their week, and explained why Russian grammar is so hard: cases. Cases themselves make a lot of sense – they show something that might not be evident in the words otherwise. However, they can be very complicated. For example, Paul and Stephen like to run: Пол и Стефан любют бигать. If Stephen goes for a run: Стефэн бигает. However, if Paul goes for a run with Stephen … Пол бигает с Стефэном. If Paul usually goes for a run with Stephen, but didn’t today… Пол бигал без Стефэна. And, those are just three of the six cases in Russian. However, learning Russian is a lot of fun!