#4 - Word Lists vs Free Reading

Are word lists with concrete aims more effective than free reading with no concrete aims? This is the question I’d like to write about in today’s blog post. As you may be able to guess, this is going to be a one-sided argument!

25 intermediate verbs. 10 idioms about food. 20 common phrasal verbs. They all promise a lot. They are attractive. You can find something out that you didn’t know before. In 2013, I studied at the MSLU for a few months. My motivation to learn Russian was quite high at the time, I started to create word lists in an application called Quizlet. It probably took me about 2 hours in total to remember 20 words. 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there, 5 minutes in the metro, 5 minutes waiting for the bus etc. I felt a sense of achievement. But could I remember one of these words in the middle of a conversation? Could I f**k! My brain had no access to the memory.

Although, I still believe lists can be useful, especially if they are personal to you, but their overall impact is limited.

Context is everything. We get so much more information about grammar and lexis if it’s in a wider context. Take the beginning of this blog post for example, hopefully you already knew the word “aims” (goal, target etc), but, perhaps, you didn’t know the word “concrete” could be use before this word. But now you know and you didn’t need a list for this! I also knew that there is a similar word to concrete in Russian (that’s why I didn’t hesitate to use the word, although I hesitated to use the word hesitate here) ;)

Humans see patterns very, very well. 1…2…4…7…11… Did you see the pattern? Did you also notice that after “Did you” we need a verb in the present simple:
”Did you read…”
”Did you go…”
”Did you try…”
”Did you finish…”
”Did you enjoy…”

As a native, we see these patterns and imitate them. Reading helps us find these patterns without us even knowing it. We just need to have a bit more faith in its power.

Ok. Well, maybe you need a little bit more than just blind faith. A Japanese study in 2010 found that students who read around 1.8 million words has the same test results as students who studied for two years and lived in an English-speaking country for 10 months. Another study found that students who had read more than 300,000 words showed big improvements in their test scores. That’s only 1,000 words every day for ten months. Easy!

The important thing is to find something you enjoy and something that isn’t difficult to read. I hope that this blog is both, but will be happy if it’s just one out of the two!

#3 - Tuesday Tennis

So, I have a little confession to make. That’s right! A confession. If you are a criminal you can ‘confess’ your crime to the police. Just like Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov did in Crime and Punishment. I feel a little bit like a ‘social criminal’. At a time when more and more people in Minsk are using the hashtag # stayathome, I decided to continue playing tennis.

Over the last six months I have always looked forward to my tennis on Tuesday evenings. I’m not a very good player and my overall level of fitness is terrible, but that doesn’t matter, I still enjoy playing. I suppose having some kind of physical exercise once a week is a thousand times better than zero times a week!

I used to play quite a lot of tennis when I was a teenager. Well, from the age of 13 to 16, to be more precise. It seems to me that tennis in this part of the world is seen as an elite sport, a sport for the rich. Well, this in my impression anyway. In one of my English classes a few years ago, I still remember a heated debate over which sport was more expensive: hockey or tennis. However, this is not so much the case in England. I’m not saying tennis is a “people’s sport” in the UK, but it is more accessible than here, in my opinion.

Rent for an indoor court in Minsk is about $20 for 1 hour and for an outdoor court it is around $10. However, in my native city of Birmingham, there were quite a few outdoor tennis courts available to use for free. All you needed was a tennis racquet and some balls. So, quite often, me and my friends would meet up at the local court and play for a couple of hours. It was possible for working-class children to play tennis. We were self-taught (this probably explains why I have terrible technique).

Playing tennis regularly again has been really enjoyable. Even when my ball goes out or hits the net, it is still a positive experience. This is why I didn’t want to stay at home. I can understand some criticism for being selfish. I’m not worried about myself and more concerned if I have the virus at the moment and then pass it on to somebody. I feel 100% healthy, but experts say it can takes a few days before you show symptoms. However, should we just stop everything? What if the treatment is worse than the disease? In other words, what if the paracetamol tablet is worse than the headache itself?

I do wash my hands regularly and take less trips to the shop but I still go out sometimes.

Having said all this, I don’t think I will play next Tuesday. I twisted my ankle 5 minutes before the end of the game and now I can’t run properly!

#2 - The Heating Dilemma

Today’s post in on a completely different topic.

There is only thing that makes me understand that winter has ended. No, it’s not pancakes. It’s not even the extra hours of sunlight or the trees becoming green. It’s actually radiators. As soon as the radiators get turned off I know it must be summer soon.

I know this is not true, but I imagine one man sitting in an empty office somewhere in Minsk with his finger next to a big red button waiting for a phone call from Batka!

Having lived in England for most of my life, the idea of a city-wide centralised heating system is a novel one. I’m sure there are plenty of pensioners in the UK who would love a low-cost centralised heating system. Contrary to popular belief, there are many elderly people in the UK with little money. Often, the attitude is that it is better to find an extra blanket than to put the heating on!

Of course, it is not only pensioners that enjoy lower heating bills, everyone does. But, the question I have is: do we really enjoy lower heating bills here in Belarus. Firstly, many homes have no control whatsoever of their heating and, at this time of year, when it is hot outside, it would be nice to have the power to switch off the heating. It seems ridiculous to be wearing t-shirts and shorts with windows wide open as energy is being wasted hour after hour.

The other thing to mention is that this energy still has to be paid for somehow. Perhaps the Government are too afraid to rise the prices and they raise the money for this through some other tax. If they didn’t waste so much money and energy of unnecessary heating maybe they would have had more money to help people during this tough time. One minute it is Rio de Shabeneiro and the next minute it is bloody freezing again because the man with the big red button has switched the heating off.

I didn’t want to complain in this post, but it’s just so annoying to feel all this waste and inefficiency. I’m sure there’ll be something more positive to write about tomorrow…

#1 - We love football

Welcome to the blog everyone. I hope it will be both interesting and useful for you. I have no idea what I will write about everyday buy I am sure I will find something.

We are living in strange times. We have never seen a virus cause such chaos on a global scale. The Spanish flu, from January 1918 to December 1920, infected around a quarter of the world’s population. There’s surely only a small percentage of the world’s population that were alive during the Spanish Flu. We don’t know just how big the total impact of COVID-19 will be, but it will certainly be big and long-lasting.

Belarus has gained quite a lot of attention in the Western media recently. Unfortunately, this attention has been negative. Even the BBC pushed one news story to the 7th highest (and therefore 7th most important) news story at that time. It was about how the Belarusian football league is the only league in Europe still playing.

I have watched two Belarusian games. One of the games was at FC Minsk and the other was at Belshina Bobruisk. I even tried to follow FC Krumkachy, but after the scandal involving BATE, I was unable to find any strong feelings for them. This is in stark contrast to Aston Villa (if you haven’t guessed already, ‘stark contrast’ means something similar to ‘big difference’).

Dinamo Brest’s ‘virtual’ fans. There’s even a vintage Aston Villa top.

Back in the streets of Minsk, I have noticed an increasing number of masks being worn. People of both genders and all ages are wearing them. More and more people are aware of keeping the distance and most buildings have hand sanitiser available. I am surely not alone in hoping that these measures will help stop the spread of the disease.

My personal hygiene habits have changed; I wash my hands more regularly than I used to, I walk when I used to take the bus, and I have started to do something different at the end of my morning shower - I make the water as hot as I can for 30 seconds then as cold as I can for 30 seconds. I read somewhere online that it can help your immunity. I’m not 100% sure about this but I do know it helps me to wake up!

Personally, I am not very worried of getting the virus. Even though I had some chest issues last year, I have faith in my immune system and in the statistics surrounding my age group. In fact, there is a decent chance that I have already been infected with the coronavirus. I felt unwell for around 12 days at the end of January and beginning of February. I didn’t have much of a temperature but I felt very weak and had a strange dry cough. It was a cough that got deep in my chest and gave me a short, sharp pain whenever I coughed. Well, whatever it was, it wasn’t very nice, that’s for sure.

I would like to finish this first post with a few comments about the attitude of the people here in Minsk. I have interacted with lots of people in the last few weeks, from students to shop assistants, and have been extremely impressed with everyone’s calmness. I was going to say “very surprised by everyone’s calmness” but that would have been a lie. In truth, I’m not that surprised. In my 9 years of visiting and living here I have witnessed Belarusians cope successfully with more than one crisis before and I am sure we can cope with another one.