How can we help Ukraine come to terms with the West?

HOW MANY YEARS SHOULD ONE STUDY A LANGUAGE NOT TO MASTER IT?

Much can be said about European aspirations, but everything would be much easier if all Ukrainians learned the languages of the neighboring nations so that they would not feel inferior to their neighbors. Obviously, all of Ukraine must now begin an intensive language study course. We begin the discussion of this issue as a propaganda drive. Ms. Tytova, would you share your views of this issue and tell us about your center, what you offer in the way of language study, and how you picture the role of the mass media?

Valentyna TYTOVA: First, I would like to thank you for taking so much interest in this burning and painful issue. What the public needs today above all is to learn to communicate. Nothing comes as easy and is valued as highly as communication. Of course, one must begin with learning to communicate in one’s native languages that prevail in the language environment in which we have been raised. But of no less importance are foreign languages, which, as it has transpired, are not all that difficult to master now that there are very effective methods and approaches to language study. Ukraine has always been famous for its people, rich traditions, and culture. Then why are we so eager to go elsewhere? Why do people come here not to learn from us but to teach us? What are we missing? We philologists think the root cause of this is in the lack of the culture of communication. There is little of it in our native tongue, let alone foreign languages.

What kind of approach to language study did we have in high school? We studied to get grades. It thus had been and, unfortunately, this approach has remained. Unfortunately, public demand for the ability to communicate in foreign languages is not satisfied. For some reason, all talk today is of business, taxes, and everything but the individual, how to educate and make him or her cultivated, confident, and free from inhibitions when communicating with just about anyone. I understand that it is unlikely that we will cause a revolution, which is not in fact our objective, but I liked the way Larysa Ivshyna put it: ‘At this stage, we of like mind simply must get to know one another and team up.’

Oleksandr KHOMENKO: Yes, we are heading toward the European Union, and our country should be represented by professionals, competent in their field of endeavor and competent in foreign languages. The problem of foreign language teaching has been long discussed in Europe. In 2001 the EU put forth a proposal addressing the problem of bilingual education: all EU citizens must speak at least two languages. In Ukraine we are only making tentative attempts: some know several languages, others one, and others still none at all.

Why is it commonly held that all those who studied, say, English for ten years in high school can use it with a dictionary at best? Why do people lose the faculty of speech when trying to speak to a stewardess, turn pale, and are unable to squeeze a single word out of themselves? What is wrong with the Soviet methods of teaching English?

TYTOVA: In school we teach a foreign language to a child who has already learned to communicate in his mother tongue. He has already moved from phonemes on to texts. He has learned to identify objects, then heard his mother’s intonation, then began to repeat words associating them with objects. And finally, a miracle has happened: the child began to speak. The speech mechanism has been launched once. Why repeat everything anew? In school or kindergarten everything begins anew with learning the alphabet. Things that have been unblocked in a natural way are blocked artificially. As a result, the child shuts himself off. Even being an extravert, the child could become prone to introversion.

In my view, we must approach the study of a foreign language as if we were remembering it and not learning it from scratch. One must proceed from the whole to the part. If we lecture the student on nouns and adjectives, this will do him no good. After all, he has already learned to speak. Meanwhile, in school the language is presented to him as a system of grammatical and lexical notions. The teacher picks up an object, say, glasses and asks: ‘Is this a pen?’ And you must look the teacher in the eye and answer confidently: ‘No, this is not a pen. These are glasses.’ This is roughly how all our textbooks are structured. Hard as we argue with the authors of such books, nothing changes.

I think that the major mistake is in approaching the language as a subject one should study to receive a grade and not as a means of communication. But language is a means of expression and a way to develop your intellect and personality. Indeed, as many foreign languages you know so many times you are a person. One cannot say that the whole world speaks many foreign languages. The French, for example, do not wish to speak English and want the rest of the world to study French. But Ukrainians have a very good ear for languages. From experience I know that teaching languages to Ukrainians and Georgians is the easiest. Perhaps this is because they are the most musical peoples? After all, speech is all about melody and intonation.

What about the Italians?

TYTOVA: The Italians are completely different. We teach a course of Italian, and students who do business with Italy say: ‘We study Italian because it is beautiful. In fact, to close a deal in Italy you needn’t know any languages: just write the figure on a sheet of paper and point at what you need.’ Italians do not speak foreign languages, because they do not need them. But we do. We must be educated because they look down at us.

Which means that we must exert ourselves to achieve a norm, which is much lower for others.

TYTOVA: Absolutely. We should not debase ourselves and underestimate our nation.

It appears that we must speak English to tell them to learn Ukrainian. Since if we say this in Ukrainian, we will not be heard.

TYTOVA: Precisely.

KHOMENKO: Returning to the question of why it took ten years not to learn a foreign language in the past period, I would like to stress again that the most important thing is setting the objective. Before the goal was to learn the language as a system: vocabulary, phonetics, grammar. Nobody really needs all this when taken separately. All of this should be put to use. New methods suggest that the language be studied as a means of communication, which in turn envisions another overriding goal of intercultural communication. I must be familiar with the sociocultural realities of the country, whose language I study, but I also must represent my own country with dignity and know its cultural values so that I could popularize them abroad as a proud patriot.

Unfortunately, stereotypes in the way foreigners picture Ukraine are at work even now. If someone knows at least something about Ukraine, you can consider him an educated person. Unfortunately, Ukraine is still associated either with Russia or Chornobyl, and Ukrainians with the so-called shuttle traders and uncultivated people. But this is not true. We must show them that Ukraine is home to cultured and learned people.

And then we will be able to say: yes we know English, French, and Italian, but want to speak Ukrainian not out of despair or for lack of knowledge, but out of pride for our language and nation.

BUSINESS ENGLISH OR PRESENTATION IN THE AIRPORT

How difficult has it been for you to overcome the resistance of the old language teaching system?

TYTOVA: Had not the system been changed, there would have been no new objectives or motives. Even the so-called shuttle traders must be able to come to terms with foreigners. Now they have advanced to a new level and also look for places to study.

Perhaps in Ukraine it has been much easier for representatives of the intensive language teaching trend than elsewhere. What makes our system better than other systems? Such notions as presenting material and mastering material are used in teaching methods. In the intensive teaching method material is mastered through communication practice. You are assigned a specific task. For example, you are journalists and want to interview, say, Mr. Soros. We discuss the questions you will ask him and ways to seize the initiative at his news conference. You should pose your questions in such a way as to make him eager to answer it. To this end, you must be prepared. Otherwise the questions will be strained and irrelevant. This is what you must be taught.

In this case you speak about teaching adults. Can your system be used to teach foreign languages to children?

TYTOVA: We apply the method of “Activation of Individual and Group Potential”. Today this is a pioneering method in the intensive language study trend. Of course, one should begin with children. A wonderful communicative textbook has been compiled for schoolchildren, Oleksandr Khomenko being one of its coauthors. We have language courses for schoolchildren and students. We have discovered that the school curriculum is one thing, while admissions requirements for matriculants are something completely different. All schools are different — general education schools, lyceums, gymnasiums — and they use different textbooks — Oxford, Cambridge, or even some antediluvian books. But everyone wants to be enrolled in universities. Meanwhile, in admissions examinations they are asked question like ‘What is the oldest monument in Lviv?’ or ‘What do you know about spas in Odesa?’

And all this in English?

TYTOVA: Of course! But few can tell about this even in Ukrainian.

Granted, our method of activation of individual and group potential is not a panacea, but only an attempt to help children to adapt using the communicative approach. You need Odessa spas? Fine. But at the same time we will give you everything we can find in Ukraine’s history and make it sound relevant and interesting.

All this you can find in our books, Ukrayina Incognita and Dvi Rusi, with which we would like to present you.

TYTOVA: Brilliant! Now we have a source of actual material.

Another rung in the ladder are students, who suffer from having been taught using books written still under the Soviets. In this case our new perspective and a modern relevant approach is also in demand. Then there are, of course, adults, who want to learn a language from zero or perfect their knowledge of it. While on the subject I would like to say the following. We are often asked if we teach so-called business English. But this notion is ill-defined.

KHOMENKO Even authors of the so-called business language courses say that there is no such notion as business English. There is English used in business situations.

Maybe this means that a person pays money and instantly becomes conversant in English?

KHOMENKO: Perhaps so. After all, textbooks on business English contain a very limited business vocabulary as such. Business is multifaceted, and each branch has its own special vocabulary. Granted, such textbooks offer chapters on business negotiations and making presentations, but 80% of this is so- called socializing, rules on how to behave correctly. Imagine that you are traveling on business to England and arrive at Gatwick Airport. You won’t begin your presentation right at the airport, will you? First you must get to the hotel and tell the cabby where to go. Also you must know that you should not sit in the front seat, for the driver might consider it an intrusion, and that you must tip him 10-15% of the fare. Then you have to get to the hotel and check in. But you can’t check in just like that. You should have called first and booked a room. That is, you must perform a whole sequence of actions, and all of this should be taught.

I would like to emphasize that ours is a research and educational center, and language courses are but one direction of our activity. The method of activation of individual and group potential was initially intended for adults. The first to be taught using this method were scientists and technicians in their thirties. But scientific progress continues. It is a pleasure that we have been the first in Ukraine to attempt to use this method in other spheres, above all in schools. A team of authors under the direction of prof. N. K. Sklyarenko have compiled a textbook called English Through Communication, in which the system of the method has been for the first time applied to foreign language teaching in schools.

LET’S PLAY KINDERGARTEN

Larysa IVSHYNA: We have talked about public demand, about the need to learn to communicate and overcome inhibitions. Our newspaper has written half-mockingly about ‘individual membership in the European Union’ in a sense that a mass movement is needed to make everyone bring himself in order. This movement should above all affect mobile social groups and not necessarily young people. When a child, I liked a rhyme about an old man who is pushing the century mark but still studies English. His old spouse disapproves of the old man’s penchant for the foreign language and pretends that she does not understand anything. Yet in the years that have passed since then people have obviously come to realize that languages are needed. Meanwhile, athletes popularize foreign languages, for example the Klychko brothers, who speak German and now are learning English, and Andriy Shevchenko, who has mastered Italian. Who prevails among your students?

KHOMENKO: Young people. They obviously represent a new generation of pragmatically-minded people, who realize that they need languages to succeed. Also businessmen, since corporate policy often requires the knowledge of a foreign language.

You also have courses of the Ukrainian language.

KHOMENKO: Yes, Ukrainian as a foreign language.

Are there many foreigners wishing to master Ukrainian?

KHOMENKO: Unfortunately, no. Paradoxical as it may sound, even embassy employees are often required to speak Russian and not Ukrainian.

Do you ever meet politicians who wish to master their mother tongue to perfection?

TYTOVA: There have been individual attempts, but they ended up hiring tutors of Ukrainian.

Do they use your methods?

TYTOVA: No. The activation method means activation of the individual and the team, which envisions not a monologue or dialog, but a polylogue and multiculturalism. Some prefer private instruction as they consider it more effective. But we do not live in isolation from the community. In a real-life situation, for example, in England you will also communicate with the community and not individuals. By the way, this community is made up not only of English natives but also of immigrants, who most often speak with a terrible accent, yet without hesitation and with confidence, and expect you to understand them.

What about the language barrier? We have mentioned that our people, after studying a foreign language for eight or nine years, cannot speak it and feel awkward. How serious is this?

KHOMENKO: Roughly 40% of our method is based on psychology. It has been derived from a method developed by Bulgarian psychotherapist Lozanov, who realized that communication activates memory and introduced a so-called activation principle for an auditorium of adults. How does it work? ‘Let’s play kindergarten!’ When you come to classes you are not Masha or Sasha anymore but, let’s say, Joy and Giovanni. You wear a mask. Assigned a role, you adapt to it. When a person returns to his childhood years, all inhibitions and restraints disappear. We play and learn in the process.

Incidentally, Russian pedagogues have been inspired by this method so much as to use it in many schools to teach other subjects. It would be wonderful if something like this happened in Ukraine, but, unfortunately, the resistance is too great.

We once mentioned that society needs a psychotherapist. It turns out that the language is a psychotherapeutic remedy to rid us of inhibitions developed in the Soviet period.

TYTOVA: This is the essence of the method. ‘I have a mask, behind which I can hide and forget about my status. I’m an adult, an important person, and I must come and speak a foreign language. But I’m afraid to make a mistake!’ This is where much depends on the teacher. Would you trust him if he’s a sullen introvert with his nose in the book? It is unlikely that you will open up before such a person. The teacher must be just like our Oleksandr Viktorovych: active, with fire in his eyes. Then you will follow his lead.

For example, we have an exercise whereby you have to pick up sheets of paper with words from the floor and make up sentences. Grownups behave and rejoice just like kids when they win.

Learning should be easy and simple. Understandably, very serious preparation is behind this. Each exercise should be motivated and should teach something aimed and precise. In this case, for example, it teaches word order. People do not think how they look when they do the exercise, since they have been given the task to find out, ask questions, inform. And you solve this assignment enthusiastically, because you do all this not for us but for your own sake: you are journalists or you are lawyers defending a client. To do this you have to ask the right questions.

Does your method envision long hours of independent study?

TYTOVA: Classes last three or four hours. Thus, almost all the studying takes place in class. But memory has a way of protecting itself by throwing out all the information that you have been trying so hard to feed into it. For this reason you are assigned short revision tasks: to find the right answers, listen to a recording, and so forth. No pain, no gain.

Who are better students — those who have come to you by themselves or those forced to study, say, by their boss?

KHOMENKO: Any kind of activity begins with a motivation. If a person has come to us, this means that his motivation is very strong.

TYTOVA: People come with various motives. For example, a student wants to enroll in a study group. Why? ‘Mother told me that I must study.’ No way, don’t come until you feel like it.

SPEECH BUILT ON RULES OR RULES DERIVED FROM SPEECH?

TYTOVA: One of the founders of our method, Georgy Lozanov, worked with children suffering from speech and motor blocks. These children did not speak their native language, even though they were not deaf and were physically healthy. Lozanov developed a method to teach such children. They speak foreign languages, absorbing them with amazing speed. His school was also hounded in Bulgaria, as it was considered to be ‘not from the Holy Spirit.’ ‘How is this possible? They do not speak their mother tongue, but have suddenly begun to speak foreign languages.’ Russian scientist Galina Kitaigorodskaya, who is the founder of our method, had a chance to visit him and study his suggestopedic method based on the child’s confidence in the teacher. Yet again, the teacher proceeds from the whole to the particular.

We always tell our students: ‘We will not teach you individual words and lecture you on verb forms. You will simply come to the first class and begin to speak. First comes a reproductive phase, that is, you will repeat what the teacher is saying, and then comes a productive phase when you speak yourselves.’ We try to teach using ready speech patterns. Each of them has grammar at its core. Of course, we could begin by explaining, for example, that a third person singular verb in the present simple tense takes the ending ‘s’...

KHOMENKO: But then the student will have to learn another language — the language of terminology. Why do this, if one can simply use the speech pattern, and later on the teacher will bring the student to a point where he will himself easily analyze the construction and derive the rule? Meanwhile, if you derive the rule yourself, you’ll never forget it.

TYTOVA: We do not teach rules to later build speech on them, something we had been taught in high school, with all these rules never developed into speech. It is better to go the other way around, to proceed from speech. The person should think not about the tense he should use in the given situation, be it present continuous or present perfect, but about how he can better express his thoughts using a foreign language in the given situation.

Judging from your observations, what is the future of exotic language study in Ukraine? There is an opinion that Ukraine’s market of specialists who speak English or German is overcrowded, and translators should better learn Korean, Chinese, and Arabic.

KHOMENKO: There should be public demand for exotic languages. We tried to introduce courses of Arabic and Turkish, but, to be frank, demand for them is not all that big. Moreover, the system of, say, the Arabic language differs from that of European languages, and it is impossible to mechanically transfer teaching methods onto the Arabic language. New methods must be developed.

We can safely assume that English is the most popular language. What other languages are in demand? Are there any essentially Ukrainian specifics?

KHOMENKO: Languages of all countries where there are Ukrainians are in demand. Above all these are English, German, and French. They have recently added Arabic, Spanish, and Italian.

Who studies, for example, Spanish or Italian?

KHOMENKO: Above all students who wish to go abroad on exchange programs. Also those who travel there for business or pleasure.

“INTENSIVE” PLUS THE DAY EQUALS SURPRISE

We say that we must propagate the need to study foreign languages, but the public at large also faces a choice between Ukrainian and Russian. That our newspaper attaches priority to the Ukrainian language is obvious, but at the same time we have decided to expand our target audience in terms of languages used by our readers. We also have a daily Russian issue and a weekly English digest. It seems to me many have noticed our efforts and use The Day as a study aid.

KHOMENKO: It offers very good material to be used in our work. In our work we need texts. Then come the methods: a system of exercises, new vocabulary, and, finally, beginning communication, that is, discussion of issues broached in the article. For this reason, we subscribe to English-language periodicals, while your weekly is interesting to us, because it addresses essentially Ukrainian problems. This makes it possible to model a situation. Imagine that a foreigner raises an issue, and you have to explain to him why some things happen in Ukraine. Understandably, this you should do in a foreign language.

TYTOVA: We also like the good language of your digest and an impartial way of presenting information. Few do this.

How do you feel about lessons of English published by some newspapers?

KHOMENKO: If they simply publish an article and a parallel translation into a foreign language, what’s the point? For in real life you will not translate a newspaper article for a foreigner. Each assignment should be motivated. The student should not merely reproduce information, but process it and express his viewpoint.

Mr. Khomenko, would you like to begin a similar column in our newspaper?

KHOMENKO: We are all for it.

TYTOVA: If approached systematically, this could prove a unique experience. Both you and we reason in a modern way and are concerned with the problems of the language. We like your approach to Ukrainian news coverage. Thus, we are all for this undertaking.

INSIDER’S VIEW

Suppose a person wants to enroll in your language courses. Where does one start?

TYTOVA: First, you have to sign up and pass a test, if you have already studied the language. Occasionally a person comes and says: ‘I don’t know the language, but I studied it.’ When asked where he studied it, he answers: ‘In high school, university, then in a different university, then in graduate school.’ ‘And you know nothing?’ ‘Nothing.’ On another strange occasion a young lady came to us, who had passed a TOEFL test but still couldn’t speak English. For this reason we always test our future students to form homogeneous study groups in terms of their language level. We have them take a self-appraisal test, and then divide them into levels.

How much time does it take to master a language from scratch using your method?

TYTOVA: From scratch to perfection — roughly two years.

We have here with us Oleksandr Koptelov, a student who has taken your courses, so to speak, a product of the pedagogical efforts of your teachers. Let us ask him to share his insider’s view.

Oleksandr KOPTELOV: First of all, you feel free from inhibitions. You see people with whom you will study and know that for several months to come you will see them every other day. Of course, at first you feel somewhat constrained. But thanks to the teacher, twenty minutes later everybody is running around, throwing balls, speaking English, and writing notes in English to one another. We give up whatever we are doing and come to the classes, no matter how busy we are. When you run into your group member in the street, you immediately switch to English.

Over the short period of time that I’ve attended the language courses I have learned to discuss some issues in English and express my views of different problems.

What was your personal motivation to study?

KOPTELOV: Occasionally I have to communicate with English speakers, while sign language and mimicry are obviously not enough to get my message across. Or, when watching CNN or BBC on cable, you would like to learn the news as it happens, but you only see the picture, but cannot understand what is happening, and begin to feel somewhat inadequate. Meanwhile, now I sit and read your English-language newspaper and understand the meaning in general, even if I come across unfamiliar words. I consider this tremendous success.

REVISION

Ms. Tytova, do you enlist the services of native speakers?

TYTOVA: Yes, but very carefully. The person must have a special certificate authorizing him to teach his language to foreigners. For this reason, we normally invite them for individual training sessions, role playing, carefully prepare beforehand, and explain what we need from them. After all, this is an invaluable experience in terms of practicing the language and overcoming the language barrier.

What would you suggest that your students do not to lose their language skills?

KHOMENKO: Without doubt, to stay sharp one must communicate in a foreign language. We offer our graduates a discussion club, where they can watch movies in foreign languages and discuss them.

Have you ever met a person who used to be fluent, but has forgotten the language completely?

TYTOVA: It’s impossible to forget a language. Thanks to our activation method, all your knowledge comes to the surface in a matter of weeks. Of course, much depends on how correctly the language had been taught to this person. Often we have to teach them anew, which is the hardest part.

LEARNING LANGUAGES FROM THE CRADLE?

Still, how can one teach a foreign language to as many Ukrainians as possible over a short period using intensive methods? What kind of system should be used? Studying from the cradle to the grave? How can the mass media help?

KHOMENKO: Language study should begin as soon as possible. We speak of preschool teaching without giving a thought to the fact that between 70 and 80% of the infant’s brain cortex forms by the age of three. This is the most favorable period for laying the groundwork, when the child absorbs everything like a sponge. Countless international studies on this issue have been conducted. Perhaps we should not be too lazy to read all this, create something of our own, and revamp the system of education. Perhaps if we began teaching infants from the age of one month we could effect global changes.

TYTOVA: Returning from the global to more specific things, we have a functioning system. All that remains to be done is to implant it in schools. But it will not work without teachers. This means that teachers should be taught first.

As for the role of the mass media, until recently there used to be this wonderful televised program, Children’s Hour, in English. Every Sunday both children and adults would freeze in front of their television screens for half an hour. People found it interesting. There had been so many edifying moments aside from all other useful things. This is a special educational film produced by the BBC, in which justice always prevails and children are taught the right things. Meanwhile, who is doing anything of the kind in the country today? Nobody.

IVSHYNA: Perhaps, if it had been firmly stated at all levels that we Ukrainians should be in Europe and if everybody worked toward this, everything would have been much simpler. Unfortunately, now only a group of people, who want to see Ukraine in Europe, are fighting a rearguard action, while pulling a wagon train of loafers, saboteurs, and simply idle people, who prevent them from expanding the scope of their activity. This means that more efforts should be made at all levels, not necessarily at the state level, and people will themselves want to join the educated and the advanced and become just like them. Thus, we will continue with our efforts. A field for cooperation is opening before us, and we will follow this path for as long as we want or can endure.

P.S. We will announce the beginning of the column, English Lessons With The Day, in the Ukrainian, Russian, and English issues of our newspaper. Follow our publications.