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ST.PETERSBURG THE SHORTEST WAY TO THE ARCTICTeaching Like in the Whole WorldA World View of Teaching: St Petersburg Center Is Prepared To Help Northerners Natalia Odintsova
St Petersburg has always been the center of teacher training for Northern Russian regions. In faraway taiga villages and northern cities it's not uncommon to find teachers who graduated from The Hertzen Russian State Pedagogical University or other St Petersburg colleges. In the recent past, attitudes to teaching many subjects, including foreign languages, have changed. For example, English language schools using effective, world-recognized methods have appeared recently in St. Petersburg because today's specialists cannot do without the skill
NO -- How can we make new methods available to teachers in the North? This is the topic, which I will be exploring with Konstantin Vitalievich Filkov, Director of EDUCACENTRE, a highly respected language school in the northern capital.
KF -- In Finland, everyone speaks English. And in neighboring Karelia or the Republic of Komi, nobody does. Why? Of course, the Finns are no more talented than the inhabitants of Karelia or Komi. The reason is that in Finland, English is taught correctly using methods that have proven successful all over the world.
NO -- How can these modern methods be implemented to teach the northerners? KF -- Teachers have to be taught. Northern teachers must realize that they actually are equipped to teach children to speak English. A "revolution" has already begun in St Petersburg schools, where we use methods created in Oxford and Cambridge. We conduct seminars to retrain St Petersburg and Leningrad Region teachers. We could also offer them to teachers from the North, supplying them with texts and methodological literature. NO -- These days, contacts are developing rapidly between Northern regions and foreign countries. Situations arise when a businessperson must quickly learn enough English to communicate with his partners. Is that a realistic expectation? KF -- Yes, of course. Naturally, there should be no illusions. It's not possible to learn English in one or two weeks, as advertising often promises. But it is possible to quickly improve your level, achieve so-called "survival English". It was in response to that demand that our filial EDUCACENTRE branch in Pushkin developed the program, Business English by Methods of Submersion. There, people study the language for 8-10 hours a day. After completing a 6-day course a person who was at a high school level can answer a telephone call, read business documents, understand his partners during business talks and express and defend his opinion. These are especially important skills for Northerners, being on the threshold of their economic development, for broadening business contacts with foreign countries.
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