Contents
Stories of outstanding women and lifelong learning are two trends of today. What happens if you combine them? New book “Use your girl power! Learning English from the stories of great women.
For 13 years as a teacher, I realized that you can only learn with pleasure. If someone says that they can’t find the time, motivation or energy for a foreign language, they just haven’t caught their buzz from studying yet. The surest way is to enter through interest, for example, through topics that fascinate you.
I collect stories of famous women. And I think that role models – women are not enough in the modern world. The life stories of Audrey Hepburn, Agatha Christie, Frida Kahlo, Rosa Parks, Gloria Steinem, Sheryl Sandberg in the author’s English-language stories help improve English skills and get a portion of inspiration and energy: “She did it, and I can do it!”
Astronaut dancer and not only
What, for example, is interesting about the story of the first black female astronaut, Mae Jemison? At least the fact that she is also a certified doctor and a professional dancer. Since childhood, Mei dreamed of flying to the stars, but she was inspired: “Girls are not allowed into space, maybe you should become a nurse?” This did not stop May, she did not give up either her interests or her dreams. After receiving a choreographic and medical education, she applied to NASA and went into space.
The biography of Julia Child is richer than we think. During the Second World War, she created special mixtures to scare away sharks from submarines, and only then became one of the first women to be educated at the Parisian culinary school Le Cordon Bleu Paris.
Julia’s dream is to teach as many housewives as possible how to cook simply but tasty, like in the best French restaurants. She created a TV show where she showed French dishes and clearly described their preparation. Her show and recipe book broke popularity records. By the way, Meryl Streep played her in the movie Julie & Julia. Interesting, right? Now imagine that you read and listen to these stories and 27 more (an interactive book) in English.
Learning or having fun? I choose everything!
Edutainment – learning with pleasure, the trend of the 21st century. We are already accustomed to the fact that education does not end after graduation from school or university, but continues throughout life. It is in our power to make it for ourselves as exciting and diverse as possible.
The book helps those who want to dust off their English, memorize dozens of new words, improve their understanding of oral speech with the help of stories and illustrations. A large team of artists worked on the book, resulting in 30 portraits of heroines, each in their own style. Beautiful illustrations – for joy, an audio track recorded by native British accents – for listening, texts – for everything at once. You won’t want to give up English!
There is also something to read in Russian: about the right approach to foreign languages, about how to find motivation, time and energy to study, how to respond to your own mistakes and declines in interest. However, it’s better to read an excerpt from “Use your girl power! Learning English from the stories of great women.
Where to get time?
Why do I tell you something in Russian in an English textbook? Scientists say that if you better understand the process of the brain and learning itself, then the results of the learning itself are higher.
For example, in the book How to Learn to Learn, you can find such an example: psychologists Anastasia Kitsantas and Barry Zimmerman conducted a study in a girls’ school. They divided the students into three groups – “Result”, “Teaching Method” and the control group – and invited them to play darts.
Only the “Method of Learning” group was taught to throw darts, aiming them at gaining experience, they learned how to hold their hand, darts, and only then – aim at the bullseye. The “Result” group was aimed immediately at the result – they were told: “Try to hit the bull’s-eye”, without explaining the mechanics and tactics of throwing darts. And the control group was simply told: “Do your best!”, without any learning activities.
The Teaching Method group was head and shoulders above the other two: they knew what, how and when to do it right in order to hit the bull’s-eye, and not just throwing darts. They learned to throw darts well because they learned to throw darts, they were immersed in the learning process.
Because learning is a process, and when they say to me: “I have so little time, I wish I could get myself vaccinated with English and wake up in the morning speaking perfectly”, I always remember this experiment – in order to learn, our brain needs to learn. For a long time, regularly, understanding the basic principles of training; you cannot learn something overnight, and such a vaccine has not yet been invented.
So where do you get the time for this “long and regular”?
Let’s figure out how much time you need in general. We always either overestimate or underestimate time. And the assessment depends on past experience and the present state of fatigue: the more tired you are, the slower it seems to drag on.
Try to mentally detect 60 seconds – a minute. The sooner it seems to you that a minute has already passed, the more tired and loaded you are. Think about how to reduce the load and make English not an unpleasant and difficult task, but a way to relax and switch.
But today I wanted to propose another experiment: try to imagine how long the third chapter will take you, along with reading, listening to audio and tasks, or just reading the text, write down this time. For example, you think that the whole chapter will take 40 minutes. Now set a timer and get started. Your goal is to find out how much you overestimate or underestimate the complexity of the task at hand.
It often happens with my students: they think that the task will take 40 minutes, but it takes 15. A pleasant surprise and the opportunity to better plan the time, because when you understand that you can do so much in 15 minutes, it’s easier to get started.
About the Developer
Anastasia Ivanova Author of books, TEDx speaker. Her .