Welcome to Series English! Today I won't teach you any vocabulary or grammar,
I'm just going to tell you my story - how I have been studying English.
So let's start from the very beginning,
I studied English at school.
I started learning it when I was in the fifth grade.
However as long as I am from a teeny-tiny town,
you can guess that the teaching was not actually very good,
to put it mildly, and I didn't get profound knowledge of English.
However when I turned 13 or 14 my father decided to study English,
and he got me and my sister involved.
He did a really good job and he is a very good disciplinarian.
So that's why we studied English for like...
We had been studying English for three to four hours a day!
Can you imagine that? Well, yeah, that's true.
And, well, as long as you think that learning a foreign language is a piece of cake,
well, it's not actually. If you want to do it very quickly
and you want to become a fluent speaker
then you have to work really hard.
So during our lessons, I guess, we did almost everything!
We started from picking up some basic vocabulary
and learning the pronunciation. Of course it was funny,
since we tried to pronounce these words and
letters, I mean sound over and over again.
And we sounded a little bit silly, I guess, but still.
In addition we studied grammar of course.
Unfortunately now I can't recover the title,
but if I find it, I will give you the title.
So, what else?.. Of course we read a lot
and we also listened to different tapes.
For that purpose we listened 'The voice of America' podcasts,
we read them, we listened to them, it was very useful!
In addition to that we used... we read different fiction books
like Harry Potter, yeah, I read all seven books
in original, it was really enjoyable and useful I guess.
Also we used video material, at first we watched the video course
called 'Follow me'. Maybe you have heard of it,
it is a very interesting, funny course.
And in addition to that we also watched different films,
like 'Pretty Woman' and 'Six days and seven nights'.
We watched 'Shrek' and 'Alice in Wonderland',
However we didn't just watch these films.
Of course, at the beginning we watched them for a couple of times
to remember the chain of events but after that
my father would create mp3 files and we would listen
to these parts of the film over and over again.
And we would read and translate the script,
we would learn and pick up some new vocabulary.
It was really interesting and useful.
So we studied really hard, and that is the reason
why when I finished school I realized,
that I want to make linguistics my profession.
I want to choose it as my profession and so I did.
However I had to pull up treas in order to enter the university,
and... however in the end I managed to do that.
And well I studied there.
At the university we also studied different aspects,
However my profession is not only a linguist,
but also a translator and an interpreter.
So that's why we practiced translating and interpreting a lot.
But it's also quite useful for language studies.
In addition to that we did a lot of listening.
We listened to BBC and translated it.
orally, that was... we interpreted it. It was a tough assignment at first,
but then we got used to it.
We read a lot of texts, analyzed them, translated them.
We did a lot of good stuff, which was really useful.
So and I got a lot from my university, of course.
And I guess that starting from the third year
I started watching TV series and films in English.
My first TV series was 'Scrubs',
and to tell you the truth it was quite hard at the very beginning.
I couldn't understand a lot.
However when I kept doing that
I realized that it's getting more and more understandable for me.
It's getting easier and I enjoyed the process.
As you can guess I'm crazy about series,
and that is actually a very good way to study a foreign language.
And I should also add that, well, they say,
that teaching is also a way of learning a foreign language.
So as long as I teach English I practice it all the time
and revise a lot of grammatical topics and issues.
and well this is also studying.
OK, I guess that's it, by the way, speaking about the university,
I graduated from it with flying colours, so all excellent marks.
However it's not so important nowadays.
I got some perks of course, but this video is not about that.
Well actually I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the learning process.
And I'm going to devote two more videos...
The first one is going to be devoted to beginner and elementary,
and the second is going to be devoted to intermediate and higher.
So that I could give you some pieces of advice,
because here I didn't give you anything,
I just told you about my experience.
And of course, there were some drawbacks, there were some advantages.
However now I'm able to analyze this process,
and understand what was not right, what was good.
And that's why I'm ready to give you my tips.
So don't forget to follow me, subscribe to my YouTube channel.
And watch my other videos.
Keep up, ask questions, as usual. I really enjoy answering...
I feel really confident when I get your feedback.
So don't forget to give me your heart as well - like my videos.
And hope to see you soon! Happy English practice! Bye-bye!