I decided for a time to tear myself away from “my native Moscow region” and “smoothly” move to the present moment. It seems not much previous material has been written, but I experienced enormous emotional tension. I will try now to recharge, telling a favourite theme.
I began studying English at ordinary Kiev school number 90, which is now considered not very ordinary, with a “cool slant.” Our 5-B class was divided into two groups: English and German. I remember I was offended, landing in the English group (I wanted to study German). Apparently I was strongly influenced by Soviet films about intelligence officers who spoke German fluently.
Our English teacher was called Riola Mikhailovna Pyatkovskaya. For some reason some of the boys called her Ariola. Riola Mikhailovna was very different from the other Soviet teachers in her impeccable outward “foreign” appearance and strict intelligentsia manners. ….And everything in her was wonderful!
Well, I don’t know, but at the beginning I tensed up, “puffed myself up” and quietly began to hate her lessons. How could I have known then that many years later fate would throw me into work at a school and I, beginning my teaching career at 45, would rely on her priceless experience of teaching a foreign language! “Inscrutable are the ways…”
The first and important assignment I proudly ignored. We were supposed to start a vocabulary notebook for new English words. Riola Mikhailovna recommended getting a thick notebook (you still had to go to the stationery shop for the notebook!), then divide each page into three equal parts, write the new words with transcription and preferably (obligatorily) glue on a picture of the new word or draw it, if there was no picture, write the translation.
Now I will try to describe Riola Mikhailovna’s anger: “Stand up!… Where is the dictionary? Are you a pupil? Are you a Pioneer?” (At this she nervously touched my red Pioneer scarf.) “If you are a Pioneer, why do you allow yourself such liberties?” I sat down and burst into tears… I think Riola Mikhailovna then received no less stress from what she had said.
The next lesson I came in full battle readiness: a dictionary with glued-on pictures of the first English words a cat, a dog, a boy. The pictures had to be cut from an old primer… Well, at that time we had NO additional aids for studying English, so we had to somehow manage with so-called visual material. That is very important at the initial stage of study: to learn words from pictures and “build” sentences. Riola Mikhailovna did this well. 45 minutes of her lesson flew by instantly. She worked only standing, masterfully changing assignments, and pictures with them.
“What do you have for breakfast?” — with excellent English pronunciation Riola Mikhailovna would ask me, showing a picture with an abundance of tasty food. And I with all my strength tried to lie beautifully in English that “Every morning, before going to school I have breakfast. I have bread and butter, I have a glass of milk, I have orange juice, I have egg and porridge, I have a cake!” And to myself I thought: if I gobbled all that, I would burst!
In life no one pressed me with breakfast. At best it was bread with butter and tea (Georgian). And I got ready for school quickly, because I had to drag my younger sister to kindergarten, put slippers on her in the cloakroom, wipe her bitter tears, because she yelled the whole way, and since we by then had “improved” our conditions with the help of the famous Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, having moved from the barracks to a one-room “khrushchoba” on the fourth floor without a lift. So every morning I literally “dragged” my beloved little sister from the fourth floor, with howls that the neighbours heard.
And in English lessons, after the one and only dressing-down from Riola Mikhailovna, telling “what a wonderful caloric English breakfast I have,” I felt like a well-fed English lady!
And now I announce a Coffee Pause for those reading and for myself “writing.”