Sometimes the hardest thing about learning a new language is getting over the fear that it’s going to be too hard to learn! That’s when someone like Kirsten Kukulski can really help. She has a long history of motivating ESL (English as a Second Language) students and providing them with fun, easy, and always helpful exercises to learn and improve English skills. Using her background as an English teacher overseas, she has put together a website full of valuable resources for both students and teachers. If you’re an ESL teacher who needs some inspiration for motivating your own students, then Kirsten’s site is definitely one you’ll want to bookmark. And if you’re a student getting ready to start your studies in the English language, you’ll find help and support on her website as well. Relax – learning English is a piece of cake with a website like this!
UV: You’ve lived all over the world and taught English in several countries. What was your own experience with learning other languages, and how has that helped you as an ESL teacher?
KK: Learning a new language as a beginner all the way through to advanced level has been invaluable in helping me to develop my own teaching style and methodology. I have been able to assess what is most effective in learning the various skills, as well as vocabulary and grammar. And I could see how discouraging lessons are, that are set at too high a level, or alternatively how boring easy lessons are.
I have been able to evaluate whether the teaching techniques I was taught are truly the most effective. For example, I was taught never to use the students’ mother tongue during lessons, but to keep everything in English. I have often had 15 minutes of my Polish lessons wasted with the teacher trying to explain a word to me, at the end of which I still didn’t understand, and all I did was go home and look up the word in the dictionary anyway. Giving the word to me in the lesson would have saved me lots of time and frustration. Not that I am suggesting that the mother tongue becomes used regularly in the classroom, but sometimes it can save time (although obviously with mixed nationality classes this would be tricky!).
Learning a new language has also helped me to appreciate how regularly you need to come into contact with a new word or grammar point before you can actually use it yourself. And this is what students find the most discouraging. Coming into contact with a word once or twice, or even three or four times is NOT enough. So I spend a lot of time in my lessons doing revision, and trying to find interesting ways of using words and idioms over and over again … and testing previous vocabulary.
UV: One of the sections on the website is titled “How to Teach” and has an outline of some of the issues that prospective ESL teachers need to consider to be as effective as possible when working with students. But you’ve also got a “How to Learn” page in the student resource section. Isn’t learning something that just happens?
KK: I agree that children’s learning often just happens, but even when learning a foreign language or an instrument, children have to set time aside to concentrate especially on the task. Learning a new language is very challenging, and it’s very easy to give up along the way. So being motivated is very important. Having a structured plan of how to learn, having a good teacher or good materials and committing more time to the exercise are all ways of speeding up the process.
UV: You emphasize the importance of saying vocabulary words out loud when you’re learning them, and that’s obviously something that students working alone can do easily. How does this technique work in the classroom? And while we’re talking about saying words out loud, what in the world does “przebyszywskiego” mean, and how is it pronounced?
KK: When I first started learning Polish – even in the first two weeks, my Polish teacher got us to read lists of difficult to pronounce words, even though we didn’t understand them. I found this exercise very helpful in establishing good pronunciation practice before we could get into any bad habits. For other levels reading out loud from a text (especially when it has first been modelled by a native speaker) can help the students with their pronunciation and intonation. During my lessons I also write down words that the students mis-pronounce and then I go through them at the end of the lesson, and get them to practise and use them in sentences.
Przybyszewskiego is the name of the road next to mine, so is a word I need to use whenever giving directions to my house. It is named after a Polish novelist Stanislaw Przybyszewski, and the ending is changed with an -ego because it is a possessive adjective (masculine) when used as a street name. It is pronounced pshibishivskee-ego (with the i pronounced as i on ink).
UV: Your vocabulary lists are very useful for people who want to quickly learn words and expand their vocabulary, and you have them grouped under topics like “school,” “science,” and “emotions.” Why did you group the words this way?
KK: When learning words they need to have a link to something else in order to make them easier to remember. Trying to memorise 5 arbitrary words is very difficult. It’s like files in a computer – they are easier to locate if placed and named appropriately. Our brains also find it easier to relocate information if it has been placed there in a structured and logical manner. This can be done in different ways e.g. learning topic specific vocabulary (emotions – happiness, anger, joy, despair), learning words with the same roots (audio, audience, auditorium, audible), or learning a word and its collocations (coffee – table, mug, shop, machine)
UV: Would you recommend that students check out the resources you provide for teachers, and vice versa? Why or why not?
KK: Because of the time restrictions that I have, I have been adding more resources to the teaching section of my website than to the student resources. This means that there are far more materials available for teachers. Students would still find these resources suitable and (hopefully) enjoyable, as the readings, videos, vocabulary and idioms are obviously all clearly set out, but it means the students have to wade through some information in the teacher’s notes, that is not necessary for them. But the answer key is provided, so they can still check their answers 
