Tower and Town, March 2026 (view the full edition)Teaching English to UkrainiansOur first lessons began in May 2022, on the fringes of the busy coffee shop in St Peter's, and then at St Mary's, where we were offered the free use of their church hall. Classes were made up of ten to fifteen Ukrainians, almost all of them ladies, all very cheerful and all very determined to learn. Inspired at first by the redoubtable Anastasia, they were taught by a mustard-keen team of volunteers - initially Rosanna and Clara Hope, Liz and Tony Michael, and myself, who were later to be joined by Claire and Nic Allott. But it wasn't as easy as we had imagined. Our pupils were of different ages and levels of language; some were looking after children; some lived in host families miles out of town; some had unpredictable appointments at the job centre - and so it was that lessons became increasingly bitty and disjointed. And it didn't help that we amateur teachers of EFL were quickly finding out that we didn't really understand our own language. For example, in Ukrainian there is no definite or indefinite article. And its English usage seemed to us almost impossible to explain. Why do we go to church but then go to the pub? Why do we speak of 'France' and yet of 'The Gambia'? And is 'Ukraine' or 'The Ukraine' the correct way to speak of that country? And let's not even mention the rules of pronunciation. Never ask a pupil to read aloud "Though I felt thoroughly rough with my cough, I thought I could tough it out through a storm so wild that it shook the boughs." And where do you begin when one of your most enthusiastic students (even after all those corrections on the mispronunciation of 'v' and 'w') asks whether a 'wov' has the same meaning as a 'promise'? As fate would kindly have it, 'formal' group lessons began to dissolve, as one by one the ladies found employment; and ironically this is when they began to learn their English most effectively, in the commonplace exchanges of a working day, as well as with their hosts and with local friends. The children at St John's and St Mary's, meanwhile, developed their own language skills with miraculous ease... and began patiently (?) to teach their own parents. Our teaching carried on, in different ways with different individuals. But now, for teachers and pupils alike, language skills no longer seemed quite so important as the fun and interest and wisdom we found in our friendships, and in coming to understand a culture so similar to - and yet so very different from - our own. Colin Fraser |