Article for Woodstock and Bladon News Viv Phillips 20. 10.2022
Teaching English to Ukrainians
It was with some trepidation that I said ‘yes’ when my friend James asked me if I was available to teach English to Ukrainians who had recently arrived in Charlbury and neighbouring villages. I qualified as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language many years ago and I haven’t been in a classroom since teaching French at Woodstock Primary School some years ago when my children were young. Could I still teach after all these years? Could I actually offer anything useful? However, when I met twin sisters, Khrystyna and Mariia, being hosted by friends in Wootton, it hit me that these young girls here alone are the same age as my own daughter. I realised then that I should focus on what I can offer rather than what I can’t.
I dusted down some of my old English Language books, but found them outdated, full of political incorrectness and not relevant at all to today’s world, let alone to our new students. James and fellow CRAG (Charlbury Refugee Action Group) members came forward with plenty of helpful suggestions. We ordered some books from Dorling Kindersley and thankfully there are some amazing websites aimed at helping refugees to learn English. So began my hunt for suitable materials for my lessons. These, along with some tried and trusted games and activities to get beginners talking in English, formed the basis of our first classes.
One of the main issues that I had to deal with for the first time, was the learners’ dependence on phones and translation apps. It took a few weeks for me to persuade them to put away their phones, lift their heads and engage with me and each other. Don’t get me wrong, translation apps such as ‘Say hi!’ have been a lifeline for us all, helping our visitors to negotiate the many challenging situations involved in moving to a new country, but without eye contact and body language, real communication cannot take place.
My class consists mainly of a group of motivated women in their 20s-50s. Some have brought along their young or teenage kids, but most children have been accepted by local schools. We all started off rather shyly and falteringly, but soon started to look forward to our lessons and our time together. Their progress in English has been very rewarding and has helped us to get to know each other a bit. Photographer Olena is here with her two sons. She loves nature and often walks across the fields from Finstock to Charlbury for her lessons. Luda is here with her 12-year old son and little Valieriia who is 3 and often comes to the lessons full of smiles and plays quietly (and sometimes not so quietly!) in the background. Natasha is a wonderful cook, who turns up with home-made Ukrainian delicacies for us like pancakes (or mlyntsi), and another Olena is here with her son Denys, who takes great delight in correcting his mum’s English! Then of course there are the lovely twins: Mariia, who has found work at The Killingworth Castle and her sister Khrystyna, a potter working at Wychford Pottery. We have also just been joined by Vova, a 15-year-old boy who is into weight-lifting. He’s here with his mum and waiting for a place at Chipping Norton School.
These proud and resourceful people all say that their experience in West Oxfordshire has been very positive. They find the people kind and friendly, with strangers smiling and saying ‘hello’ in the street, and bus drivers cheerily reminding them where to get off the bus. Their dreams are for the war in Ukraine to end so that they can return there and perhaps repay our hospitality by inviting us to their beautiful country. Other dreams? To learn to speak better English of course!