5 stages of accepting the inevitable: how life made me learn English

I am 26 years old. During this time, I, like many sympathizers, have often come across the fact that English is needed. You can't do without him at a foreign presentation, working moments are a hundred times more difficult without him, after all, it's very difficult on vacation without him!

Like everyone else, I put off for a long time, thought, doubted, and actually overcame all these unfortunate "5 stages of denial of the inevitable." And the inevitable thing was that it was urgently necessary to take yourself, as they say, in hands and learn English!

Denial

The main trump card of all lazy people is "I used to live and now I will live." An epiphany came to you, at 20 or at 28, it doesn't matter. It is important that you calm yourself down by the fact that before that you coped perfectly without any knowledge, which means that now you can take your time.

I was lucky, it wasn't every day that I was faced with the fact that the lack of knowledge in English put me at a dead end. Yes, there were stupid situations when a joke in English was thrown into the general working chat and, while everyone was laughing, I frantically Googled the translation to understand what was so funny (English — funny, funny).

And also, when you begin to understand the meaning of your favorite English songs, you feel terribly disappointed.

Anger

Anger is when you bought a brand new camera on vacation and can't deal with it because the camera is good, but im—port-on-me! And for her, the instruction in Russian, as they say, is not available (English — not provided / not available). But there are in Chinese, Spanish, Tatar and, of course, in English. Only you don't know him, so you spend two hours trying to figure it out using a scientific poke.

Anger is when your man yells at the hotel receptionist because he sincerely thinks that if an English—speaking person is explained in Russian, but LOUDLY, he will understand. And you stand there in silence because decent girls don't scream.

Anger is when a prospective partner sends you a brief and a product presentation in English, and instead of being furiously creative, you start "machine translation".

Auction

I really began to bargain with myself. With my mind, with the farthest part of it, I understood that a meeting with the textbook was inevitable, but I still stubbornly justified myself. From the list of excuses below, choose those that you told yourself. If you find at least one match, you dig your own grave (English — dig your own grave):

— there is no time (I work, I work day and night, I raise a cat, I feed myself, I feed a man, sometimes I sleep and do a manicure — what kind of English is there?); — I don't know which school to choose (there are many of them, there are more than pigeons in the capital, each has so many reviews, what if to read everything, you risk getting old without knowing what the mysterious "circumstances" means.); — expensive (yes, I work day and night, but it's still expensive).

Depression

This stage came suddenly when I realized that the time to get to my mind had already come. I just remembered that earlier, when I was in school, I knew everything that I would be told again.

And the lost time, my own laziness and unwillingness to study plunged me into such melancholy that I almost gave up… But no! "I won't give up*," I said to myself, and it began…

* I will not give up — Eng.

Acceptance

Acceptance, like depression, came suddenly. In fact, it came along with the solution. I finally took hold of my head. First it was necessary to neutralize all excuses.

The hardest thing (especially in winter) is to force yourself to come to the courses. It was this laziness that I covered up with "no time". Therefore, I immediately rejected the full-time courses. But for me and my thermophilia, the English courses via Skype were perfect. I chose the Skyeng school, where I had already studied before. From the first time we did not work out with these courses — the reluctance to do "homework" prevented us. But without them, remembering at least something will turn out very, very bad. After all, we all know from school: to learn a foreign language, you need to practice constantly.

Everything that does not concern work in my life does not lend itself to time management. It is difficult for me to choose even a couple of hours a week and "stake out" them for one thing. Even if it is vital to learn a foreign language. In Skyeng, you can create a training schedule yourself, negotiate with the teacher and even reschedule the lesson if necessary.

By the way, the teacher is a separate song. The first teacher they picked up for me turned out to be a cute conditional "Vasya with glasses", who confessed his love for synecdoche in three paragraphs in his profile. I got scared, and I asked to change the teacher. The manager immediately clarified what the reason was, and even contacted me by phone on my inarticulate "does not fit the type". I had to explain that I am an aesthete to the core and only a charismatic teacher with a good sense of humor (and handsome, yes!) can motivate me. I was ashamed and embarrassed, but the manager had no questions. On the contrary, I was offered several "experts in English to choose from" at once. And all the heroes.

Well, besides the fact that classes can be bought with a "package" (several lessons), there is an opportunity to choose with whom you want to study: with a native speaker (English — native speaker) or with a Russian-speaking teacher. And there are also a lot of nice chips "in the set".: you constantly talk to the teacher in English, they communicate with you on topics of interest to you, and do not force you to write the tenth essay on the topic "My family".

Classes are held on Skype, and before everyone comes a reminder, they say, "dear, do not forget!". After lessons, I am now given homework, and I need to do them in my personal account. So the lesson time is not spent on checking — in class you are either immediately praised, or mistakes are explained and helped to avoid them. Comfortable.

Moreover, they are hitting on all fronts — together with classes, homework, reminders and mailing lists, they also offer an application that helps to memorize more, even more English words. They offer to watch movies with voice acting in English, which are conveniently collected on one platform and ranked by genre. Well, for extroverts (that is, not for me) — a conversational club, in order to pump the colloquial speech more.

You understand that if you still don't know English, you lose a lot. The possibility of communication, time and sometimes your own nerves. Unfortunately, more often we start doing something useful after we have passed these notorious "five stages", and again regret the wasted hours. In fact, each situation can be reduced to just one "acceptance", the main thing is to tell yourself in time: "Need to!"

We need to learn English, gentlemen. Need.