Since I write everything from memory, I may allow some slight inaccuracies. The first textbook that left an indelible impression in my memory and later influenced my late teaching career (I have already written that by the will of fate I became an “Englishwoman” at school at the age of 45). In 1967 a textbook came out by a real Englishman, Richard Richardovich Dixon. Now we all know that abroad they do not use patronymics, so it sounds funny.
Naturally my favourite teacher recommended that everyone interested in English buy it. I bought this little book, in a flimsy paper binding, for 1 rouble 20 kopecks in a bookshop in the Passage on Khreshchatyk.
What was the genius of this textbook? It included 1200 of the most common English words and 15 everyday topics. And… almost every new topic included in sequence a new section of the “hated” grammar! And also under each word of the key sentence there was a transcription, which was also not simple for beginners to master. But, again, there was no sound accompaniment, that is tape recordings.
Why do I recall this with regret? I confess, I missed precious young time, when “the ears are in place.” I explain what I myself learned not so long ago at a lecture at the Pedagogical University: when a child is little, he has the ability to hear both native speech and foreign speech 100%, and an adult over 50 hears and distinguishes foreign words only 7%. And not because “we are deaf,” but simply that ability to perceive foreign speech is lost! That is what I encountered, beginning to study Norwegian at the age of 57.
And now….. I announce a coffee pause!