Russia
How I Learned English
By Nuraniya Kadyrova
I had a desire to learn English for the first time when I was 14 years old. A foreign language in Russian School was to be studied in the 5th grade. I learned German, but the desire to learn English was difficult to fulfill. There were no manuals for learning English, and I couldn’t study phonetics.
In 1964 I traveled on a steamboat along the river Volga. There I met a girl. Her name was Natasha. She was 8 years old. Natasha learned English at the school. I asked her parents for permission for the girl to study English with me. My trip ended after 2 weeks, and my English classes also ended. After I didn’t learn English, because it was impossible to find a teacher and my parents didn’t have money for a tutor.
The next attempt to learn English was when I was 20 years old. I studied at the university. Scientific literature of the university was in English. I used the service of students, who knew English. The administration knew our problem. They wanted to help students, and electives for the study of English were organized. But it didn’t last long.
My third attempt to learn English was in 2009, when my daughter and her husband moved to live in the United States. We already had the computers and various programs for learning English. I started learning English again on TV on my own. Then I took a teacher, but it was expensive for me.
In 2014, I came to visit my daughter’s family. My daughter had a girl and I stayed in the United States to help her. As my granddaughter grew, I had more time. I wanted again to study English in Olympia. Once I talked with an American friend, and I told her about my desire to speak English. She got me to the web site of SPSCC.
I registered for the winter quarter ESL classes of SPSCC. It was very hard to study. I didn’t understand the teacher. I watched the video in ZOOM 3 times only then did I realize something. I did homework for 4-6 hours a day, learned words, but forgot the next day. Gradually I began to understand some of the words of the teacher. I translated all my homework into Russian and then I did it in English. All this thanks to the pedagogical skills of my teacher. Having passed the exams after the winter quarter, I will learn English if I study every day. I think this is the only way I will be able to speak and communicate freely with American people.
