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Helping Ukrainians Speak English - What my ENGin buddy & I talked about this week - Part 2 [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-12-26

Summary of Part 1

Last week, in Part 1, I started to give some details of what we covered in a previous week’s (fairly typical) conversation, and talked about the first few items on our agenda.

In this diary I’ll cover the rest of our agenda, and, as promised, say a bit about some things you may find you can do if your buddy would like to talk about a point of grammar, and you are not comfortable ‘teaching’ grammar at all.

Remember that being OK with grammar discussions is absolutely NOT a requirement for volunteering. As an ENGin volunteer you sign up for weekly conversation sessions, and as long as you are giving your Ukrainian buddy the opportunity to talk to (and listen to) a fluent English speaker, you are fulfilling the valuable commitment that you agreed to.

Introduction to Part 2

My apologies in advance. This diary is rather heavy in grammar talk. Even if you have no interest in grammar, I hope that you’ll bear with me as I describe the second half of my 15 Dec 2023 session with my buddy, Яна.

I’m reporting on my sessions with my buddy, and not suggesting that your sessions with your buddy should be the same.

Our Agenda for The Week’s session

Here’s what we had planned (and what we postponed) for the week (lightly edited). In the last diary I covered items 1-4. This time I’ll cover 5, 6, & 7.

Session 34 - Friday 2023-12-15 09:00 – 10:30 ET; 16:00 – 17:30 EET - https://meet.google.com/xxx-yyyy-zzz

Free conversation, exchange weekly news - 30 mins Yana’s homework: Turing test, Alan Turing, Chinese room experiment - postponed to next week

https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/turing-test Planning future topics (grammar and non-grammar) Topics Malcolm’s homework - Adjectives and Adverbs - use and abuse - code switching

- postponed to next week Corrections from Telegram chat-2023-12-13 More synonyms & phrasal verbs in the future?

As I was looking at the screen, another item appeared - Яна was sneaking in a last-minute topic!!

7. Malcolm’s project with information for other volunteers

I was intrigued!

5. Corrections from Telegram chat-2023-12-11

On 11 December Яна’s internet provider was hit by a cyber attack, and by the time of our planned session on 13 Dec, services had not been completely restored. She was in a crowded cafe trying to get some work done, and it didn’t look like a video session would work, so we had a text chat on Telegram. In lieu of commenting on her speaking abilities and fluency, this time I gave her some feedback on her writing.

Today in our regular session we talked about my comments: Яна rejected one, and justified her original sentence. This is good - exciting, even! It tells me a couple of things:

She doesn’t expect me to be perfect (just as well 😀)

She is not afraid to challenge me if she thinks I am wrong

We both recognise that we can learn from each other

6. More synonyms and phrasal verbs in the future?

These were topics that Яна originally asked to be put on our list for discussion - areas of language use that she correctly identified as essential aspects of fluency in English. In previous sessions we had spent time on one or other of these topics.

I asked Яна if she thought that these topics were a fruitful use of her time. She confirmed that they were, and so we’ll plan on future sessions that incorporate them.

This is an example of how Яна, though sometimes prompted by me, largely controls what we spend our time on.

Synonyms

In non-technical conversations, fluent speakers use synonyms naturally to add variety and interest. (A technical discussion is another matter altogether.) So, for example, if I were talking to a friend about my sister, at different points I might refer to my sister; or my remaining living sibling; or Elizabeth; or the only girl in our family, etc., thus avoiding the dryness of constantly repeating “my sister”.

I started to make a list of business terms (Яна’s interest), and common synonyms for them. Яна wrote a description of a real-life situation with her choice of business term - plan as a verb and as a noun - using about 10 different synonyms spread throughout 12-15 sentences. Gold Star performance!

Phrasal Verbs

Like many other grammatical constructions, phrasal verbs crop up in both formal and informal English without most native speakers even being aware of what they are and how they are used. I believe that it would be almost impossible for an English language learner to understand idiomatic English without a good grasp of phrasal verbs, or to produce normal-sounding English without using them.

According to Merriam Webster, a phrasal verb is “a phrase (such as take off or look down on) that combines a verb with a preposition or adverb or both and that functions as a verb whose meaning is different from the combined meanings of the individual words.”

Above, the words “crop up” are bolded. This is an example of a phrasal verb: the meaning has nothing to do with the act of cropping, and does not result in anything moving up to a higher level. In spite of that, people reading this diary who are fluent in English all knew what I meant. But a second language learner may be left puzzled.

7. Malcolm’s project with information for other volunteers

When I saw this item materialize on the agenda I had no idea what Яна was referring to. It turned out that she remembered that I mentioned to her some time last month that I was starting to get involved in DK - thanks largely to AnnikaQED and captianfactoid - and she wanted to ask me for a status report!

I gave her the URL for Helping Ukrainians speak English - How my ENGin buddy & I plan sessions, and what we talk about . So, look out folks - Яна’s on the case!

Hat tip to The Greenmantle who asked a few weeks ago if we should invite our students to read Daily Kos.

Helping your Buddy with the Grammar You May Not Love!

Disclosure: I don’t hate grammar. In fact, although I’m not an expert on the subject, I quite like grammar. For me, it has a nice combination of rules, reasonable exceptions, and really strange-seeming stuff.

Overall I like grammar well enough to have learned how to talk about it, and to be comfortable helping my buddy with it. From time to time she catches me in a mistake, which helps to keep me grounded.

Creating the adjective & adverbs lesson

I’m afraid that I will have to postpone this topic until part 3 of this 2-part diary - sorry 🙁 - I’ve run out of oomph during family holiday preparations etc.

WHAT ENGin DOES

ENGin is a nonprofit organization that connects English-speaking volunteers aged 14+ with motivated young Ukrainians aged 9 to 35 for online speaking practice and cross-cultural exchange.

See https://www.enginprogram.org/ and https://www.enginprogram.org/volunteer

Note: This diary contains my own perceptions and opinions, and

should not be considered as the official views of ENGin.

Diaries with ENGin content will appear with the tags #TutoringEnglish and #Ukraine

Слава Україні!, 𝑺𝒍𝒂𝒗𝒂 𝑼𝒌𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒊! Героям слава!, 𝑯𝒆𝒓𝒐𝒊𝒂𝒎 𝒔𝒍𝒂𝒗𝒂!

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