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When I was 11, the Iron Wall came down and the Czechs could finally travel abroad. Well... to the West. I used to spend all my childhood vacations in Bulgaria so I couldn't have been more excited to cross the borders to the colourful world called Western Europe, 21 years ago. But unlike most of my schoolmates' parents, mine didn't take me just across the borders, to Vienna. We went all the way - to the British Isles. In my dad's old Škoda 120L :). And that's where my English Without Books journey started...
So when I finally entered the land of The Beatles, in 1990, my dad did the cruelest and, at the same time, the best thing he could for my future EFL journey. He dropped me in his friend's home for two weeks and left for Scotland. Here was my chance to start swimming in the sea called "ENGLISH".
And Bristol is such a pleasant city to visit on a summer holiday. The wonderful history, culture, architecture, the port and the numerous parks where you could spent your whole life picnicking... We didn't wan to leave. It's comforting to know it's only 2hrs away by plane, instead of 30hrs by car.
This time I had a flip cam on me and thought it'd be pretty cool to shoot a short film in Bristol. So here you go... (You can also see Anita Adnan and her family in the video. Anita is my fellow EFL colleague whom I met 7 months ago on Facebook and now for the first time in person. She is such an inspiration for me.)
And Bob is such an interesting man to talk to. He likes telling stories about Bristol, explaining the origin of English expressions and genuinely loves foreign languages. He speaks fluent Czech and Russian which is quite odd for a Brit. He befriended Milan Kundera back in the 1960s when Kundera still lived in Brno and the road to the realms of Czech literature less travelled by Brits was on offer, so he gladly took it. Ten years ago Bob published an Introduction to 20th Century Czech Fiction for his students and, although retired, gives lectures on Czech and Russian literature all around the world. Here is the first part of the interview:
The second part where he talks in more detail about his love of Czech literature and language was unfortunately recorded on my mobile phone instead of the flip cam which stopped working halfway through. So I'm sorry about the quality.
Would you like Bob to be a guest blogger on EnglishBrno? Please, leave a comment with suggestions what you'd like to read about.
Happy speaking!
Nina
P.S. I´d like to note that I wrote this blog post in my favourite Brno café Kavárna Locus, enjoying a blueberry mojito and French chansons. If you are from Brno, you simply must come, enjoy the atmosphere and taste their drinks, pastries and meals. And maybe to meet me there one of these days? Let me know.
9 comments:
Hey Nina, what a great way to share your path. Seems like quite the linguist adventure !
I think for students it's really important to see how we've grown in a language too. It can be such a hard process that sometimes we feel we're up against a wall, but it just takes persistence.
Lastly, I always love hearing more etymology stories, so it could be interesting to have Bob share that with your audience... but that's just me ;-)
Cheers, Brad
Hi Nina,
I wish I had as interesting a story to tell about my adventures in English as you! When it's your first language you may not see it with fresh eyes... you just speak it... there's not much to say about your growth... it's always just been there. I'm envious!
I really enjoyed your story. Thoroughly. I don't often read blog posts, even if I subscribe to them!... but I'll definitely be looking forward to your next.
I'd like to hear some anecdotes about his early years learning Czech, and a mistake or two he made because of the confusion of translation, as happens to all of us learning a foreign language. I know absolutely nothing about Czech, so maybe he could give us a mistake he used to make and explain why it was funny and what he should have said instead... that would be awesome.
Thanks a ton!
... also, you need to put a share button below your posts so I can share them!
Brad and Frank,
thank you so much for your support! I am very happy to have you commenting on my blog, what an honour for me!
I am a total amateur and this whole blogging html is hell for me. Frank, I have managed to manually add my FB and Twitter buttons (for some reason blogger doesn´t take my settings to have them automatically below the posts, must have messed something up) and I´m also looking into adding the .pdf versions of my lesson plans. I wasn´t actually expecting this interest so need to polish my blog a bit :). I am working on my new website now with a very good webmaster so once my website´s up and running, I will ask him to help me here with my blog as well. Thanks for caring!!
You have some great ideas for Bob´s blog post, I´ll forward them to Bristol :)
Nina
Okie, if you need some help with blog HTML give me a shout...
Hi Nina, it is fantastic article about your childhood´s first experiance about English. Sometimes I feel like you when you were alone in abroad but you were more younger than me but the first steps in English are for everyone same:-)The life is very interesting- in your youth have you been thinking that you´ll be teacher of English when this (not so happy) time is big step for your job and another experiances.
Léňa
As a child I never wanted to become a teacher because I thought you can only teach children, at school which I didn´t find so attractive at the time. I became a teacher by accident. But that´s for another blog post :)
Both of my parents used to work as school teachers, my mom taught arts and Czech language to 5th - 8th graders in a small village school. My dad studied to become a history teacher but only taught for one year, he refused to become a communist so he couldn´t do his job, same as many other people in communistic Czechoslovakia.
Absolutum wonderfulum.
Such easy flow.
Your writing style is captivating and non-taxing.
It is because you have been a very good student of the language, you have to be a very good trainer/teacher too.
I salute you Girl.
Mighty Impressed.
Thank you so much, Dinesh, for your compliments. I am trying to be the best teacher I´d like to have myself. My motto is: Learn with love!
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