Интервью с Кевином Канселларо [Eng]

Кевин — это один из самых популярных преподавателей Совбака. Большинство студентов слышали о его курсах английского ещё до поступления на программу и продолжают говорить о них даже после сдачи финальных экзаменов. Основная причина в том, что многим нагрузка Кевина кажется слишком большой. В этом интервью мы поговорили с преподавателем о его жизни, курсах на Совбаке и любимых книгах. Русская версия вопросов и ответов будет здесь, но после курса Кевина она вам точно не пригодится:)

The first question is about your biography. We know that you worked in Japan, in The US Army, and had some music part in your hobbies. Will you tell about it more? What experience you had before coming to NES?

That is a long story, but I'll make it short. I went to a special school for Arabic interpreting as I was interested in languages. Later I decided to get my degree in Chinese because I was interested in China. I spent a year and a half there and got my bachelor's in Chinese. Then I went to Japan and started teaching. This is how I got interested in teaching English. I didn't really know what to do with my degree in Chinese, I didn't want to go to business and I was interested in languages. I figured out that teaching was sort of applied linguistics, so I could actually teach languages and study.

Then I wanted to learn more about second language acquisition, got my master's in it, went to a few more places to teach. I went all over the world teaching, but I had never been to a Slavic-speaking country. I wanted to try to live in a Slavic-speaking country because I am interested in languages and also because culturally I had never tried anything like that. That is why I came to Russia.

You said that you were studying Chinese and then occasionally came to Japan. How does it happen?

When I was in my last year of university I saw an advertisement for something called “The Japan Exchange Teaching program”. It was a really great program from the Japanese government, where they recruited university students to teach English in Japan in high school. The first time I taught high school and junior high school, I wasn't really a qualified language teacher, but they wanted team teaching mostly. After that, I liked Japan a lot. So I went back a few more times.

And Japan is a place where you also started aikido classes?

The first place I went on the Japan exchange teaching program was called Kofu, Yamanashi. I told one of my fellow high school teachers that I was interested in aikido. He told me that a really famous aikido teacher lived almost next to my house. So I started aikido with one of the best aikido people in the world. This was really lucky, because Kofu, Yamanashi is a small town. To find one of the best people in the world was amazing.

What about music? When you started playing musical instruments?

I started piano when I was 5 years old and I mostly play Jazz now. I played when I was a graduate student to make some money. Mostly, I was into performance and did some composition stuff. I did that for three years. So, yeah, I have been playing piano my whole life. I can play other instruments a bit too, but the piano is my main instrument.

What is the thing you like most about teaching?

As I said, I am interested in linguistics, but just studying grammar gets a little bit boring. So I am interested in lots of factors (motivation, frequency of input and etc.) of how people learn languages. And there is a big difference in learning languages as a child and as an adult. Why is it so difficult to acquire languages when you are older? This is one of the questions I have in my profession. There are lots of interesting explanations for this.

Let us speak about your course at NES. How do you choose topics for articles? Is it just random things fron the Internet or you have another way for choosing them?

One of the main purposes of 201-courses is to expand students' vocabulary. In order to do that you have to do different topics every week. So, in 201, one week we do economics, one week we do art, and another week we do philosophy. Each week is a new topic. I do that because each subject has a different set of vocabulary. If you study only economics, you will only be exposed to those vocabulary words over and over. But if I give you an article about art, you will receive a whole different set of vocabulary, which you need to become fluent. I choose these topics because they give the necessary vocabulary to be able to talk about any topic.

In the second semester, I choose topics at random, because by that point students supposedly have a base of vocabulary, and they do not need it so structured anymore. I choose whatever is interesting to me, whatever I read in newspapers, what I think would make a good discussion. Every topic I choose has some controversial points that people can talk about. As long as an issue has a lot things to discuss, it is good.

When you evaluate students, what do you pay most attention to?

The course is set up so that I evaluate students the whole semester. There are quizzes every week, midterms, finals, final projects, and participation grades. All of these are different parts of the final grade. It is not just one final thing. You have to measure the progress of the student the whole semester with the above-mentioned things. At the end of the semester, it is just a math problem, which I put in Excel, and that is the grade.

Do you think that your course is too difficult?

Well, no. If you look at years before that, you will find out that my class average is 6,5/10, and 1 or 2 people out of 45 fail, sometimes nobody fails. This is exactly the same as any other course. It is not more difficult than any other course.

The last semester was strange because there was online teaching, everybody stopped studying while they were at home because I could not give quizzes.

I think it is a good point to mention that quizzes are a good point to motivate students to study. And online-quizzes are not effective. The previous eight years students had quizzes every single week, and this pushes them to learn a vocabulary more.

Can you give several tips for your future students how to do well on your course?

It is really simple: study words every week and do what I say. I say this every single semester, but nobody listens: procrastination is a huge problem in Russia. I tell them this because there is a really large number of vocabulary words. You have to study a little bit every day and review every single day, not one night before a quiz like everybody does. Nobody listens to me, but if they actually did and studied 15-20 minutes a day, they would have no problem with passing tests.

I am not sure how to fix the existing problem, but I know that students who get 9 and 10 in my classes, study a lot and frequently. Frequency is a key issue in language learning.

Do you communicate with your graduates now? Maybe you can tell how english course influenced their career?

I do talk to a lot of my former students. A lot of them are working in jobs, where they need English. I got some comments about the Business Negotiations Course. Students said that they actually used in real life the concepts that we did during our classes. Other comments were about vocabulary. Words encountered in real life. And they said they remembered studying that, which is good.

What about your 300-level course? Am I right, that we have to learn a book about business negotiations and in a parallel with that to read big articles like in 200-level?

There are no articles, there are case studies, that analyze different aspects of a company. It presents a business problem, and you have to negotiate two sides of it. And there are two books about business negotiations. You will have to learn the basic principles of negotiations, vocabulary from books, and vocabulary from case studies.

Well, the rest are common questions. What are your plans for future life?

I am doing my future plans now, so it is my future life. But I am working on my research. It is about how students can improve in second language writing depending on the type of error correction. I would really like to publish it. I think it is the main goal for the next couple of years.

Can you please advise a book for students?

I have lots of favorite books. If you want a non-fiction book, I can suggest one of my favorite books about Russia — The House of Government. My favorite fiction book is "Shadow Country" by Peter Matthieson. It is really difficult for second language learners because there are dialects. But it is a fantastic book by a famous writer.

I think you have travelled a lot. Maybe you have a favorite country or a place, where you want to come back again?

It is kind of a toss-up between Spain and Japan. I really like Japan and feel at home there. But every summer now before COVID I went to Spain. Also, I lived there for 2 years when I was in the navy. So I really love this country, too. If I had a choice, I would spend six months in Spain and six months in Japan. Now I am in Russia, and it is exactly between Spain and Japan. So that is good.

Speaking about Russia, maybe there are things in Russia that differ from other countries and you like them more or less?

I don't really like small talk. That is important in America, Japan, and Spain. Nobody cares about that here, it is very direct in Russia. Nobody smiles here artificially, and I don't either. That is why I look kind of serious. Those things fit my personality.

Also, I love borsch in the Pushkin cafe, I like draniki with hren and salo. Pirozhki and okroshka are also great. But there is no a lot of Russian food that I eat, so I was a little disappointed with Russian cuisine compared to Japan, Spain, Italy, and China.

Надеемся, что после этого интервью курс Кевина больше не будет казаться таким пугающим :) Если вы хотите больше интервью с преподавателями Совбака, то пишите редакторам канала в личные сообщения.

Автор: Дарья Авдеёнок (@davdeyonok)