Christian English Day Camp 2011

I am so glad it's Friday and I can have some quiet time to reflect on the past week. It was a fun week - there was a Christian English day camp in our church. The younger kids came in the mornings and the older ones came in the afternoons. My daughter Delia was one of the campers in the morning shift and I was glad to serve as a helper. I love helping other people :)
First let me share some pics. You will see one and the same little girl in the pictures. That's my daughter ;)

Playing a game to help the kids get acquainted with the American team

The youngest group (4-6 year olds) with their favourite American young lady.

Playing soccer

More soccer :)

Watching a cartoon

First of all, I'd like to share the benefits of the camp:
1) The kids heard God's word;
2) They heard native English speakers and tried to understand them or at least get used to the rhythm of their speech and the pronunciation.
On Wednesday my daughter shared one thing with me. She said, "You know, mom, that's ok that the Americans don't speak our language. I can already understand the most important things they say." I asked her, "So what are those important things?" She answered, "They are 'yes', 'no' and 'ok'". :) It sounded very funny and at the same time very true because I saw how those little kids communicated with the American team. They understood some words, but they got the meaning of most things that grown-ups said by their gestures, facial expressions etc. And if they wanted Americans to do something with them or for them they just took somebody by the hand and showed what they wanted. What a simple and effective strategy :)

What I missed in camp was ... English teaching (it was supposed to be an English Language camp, so I kind of expected some structured approach which makes things a lot more effective and easy for students). The group that came obviously didn't do a study of teaching methods and didn't choose a method they wanted to use, so English teaching was mainly a spontaneous process (with a couple good exceptions). Which means that the positive effect of the camp on the language abilities of most children will probably be lost very fast.

But in spite of this fact, I can still say that I loved the camp! It was a great chance to change my usual routine and to serve. The team was wonderful. It was clear that they love children and love the Lord. And they shared not only their love, but also His love with the little ones.

10 interesting facts about the Russian language

In my previous post I promised to follow with the interesting info about some other languages. So here are 10 facts about the Russian language which might be of interest to those who are studying it. If you would like to have this list in Russian, please contact me and I will send it to you by email. So, what do I find interesting about my native language? 1. Russian has about 500,000 words, but only 2,000-2,500 of them are used frequently. 100 most frequently used words make 20% of all written and oral speech. A high school graduate's vocabulary usually has 1,500 to 4,000 words. Those who have graduated from a higher educational institution normally have a richer vocabulary consisting of approximately 8,000 words. 2. It's compulsory for all astronauts in the international space station to learn Russian, so we can call it an international language of space :)

15 interesting facts about the English language

I prepared this list for one of my English classes. And then it dawned on me that I can share it with you, too! So here are 15 facts about the English language that I find very interesting. Hope you do, too ;) Rudyard Kipling was fired as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. His dismissal letter said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language. This isn't a kindergarten for amateur writers." No language has more synonyms than English.

Clients vs translators: how do we show that we're honest?

This is a personal post, and I'd really like to hear the opinion of my colleagues about such situations and how to deal with them. My situation is kind of like the one described in Mox's blog . In December a new prospective client wrote to me asking about my availabiility for a new project. When I read the overall description of the project, I got really interested in it. But the client needed to know exactly how much time it would take and how much it would cost. No problem, just send me the text to look through or a part of it so I could get the gist of the style, level of complexity etc. In the reply that person just stated the wordcount, but there was no sample. I thought, maybe they didn't understand me. English is not my native language after all. In my reply, I stated the estimated time and cost based on the client's wordcount, but I repeated the request to see a part of the text. And then the person thanked me and ... disappeared.

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