by Lingoda Team
Updated on November 10, 2022
Lingoda Live: Student Time
Lingoda Blog Interviews: Alexandra (Student)
Name: Alexandra Ivanova
Age: 27
Spirit animal: Zebra (full of contrast)
Dream job as a child: Acrobat in a circus
Actress who would play her in a movie about her life: Sandra Bullock
There are tons of reasons to start learning a language. Meeting the love of your life and moving to his/her country, starting a new job, as a hobby. All these are common reason to go through the effort of learning a language. Alexandra has a pretty common reason, too: she is studying engineering in Tallinn, Estonia at the Tallinn University of Technology. Studying engineering in English that is. So, faced with the seemingly unsurmountable task of studying engineering in a language she had not fully mastered, she decided to look for options.
After completing her degree in journalism at the St Petersburg State University (the knowledge of which has definitely put a touch more pressure on me writing this) she realized that finding work in Russia was very difficult, so she decided to start over and do something else. Part of what drove her down the engineering road was her love for programming. Wireless technology has also been an interest of hers along with Internet of Things technology (IoT)
Having conducted the interview in English, I can guarantee: her conversational English is more than sufficient. She knows that making mistakes is a big part of how to learn, so she is not afraid of that anymore.
However, studying in a foreign language is tough, let alone studying engineering. She has already managed to learn Polish, which proved to be a great way to make friends in a country so culturally different to her own. So, she understands the value language has.
As an au-pair in the beautiful southern Swedish wilderness for two adorable 1 and 4-year-old kids, she does not have the time or flexibility to take classes in a brick and mortar building. That’s why she decided to go beyond the classic teaching methods and look into the infinite possibilities of the internet.
Although her English was enough to perfectly communicate meaning in a conversation, studying engineering is another level of complexity. So, after her private tutoring had proven insufficient, she decided to try out Lingoda.
Lingoda offers the ability to decide around what subject you want to learn a language. Want to speak English? How about learning that in the context of the prohibition in the US in the 1930’s? For Alexandra, this meant that she could actually combine learning English and getting started with her engineering materials. Obviously, this was limited to the engineering knowledge of the teacher, which was non-existent. However, the teacher made a sufficient effort to prepare for her classes based on the scientific articles that Alexandra found on Google Scholar.
Since German was an obligatory language in university, she did a bit of that as well. But the teachers weren’t very good in her uni. Also, she has experienced a sad lack of positive experiences with Germans. Until our interview, that is
Unfortunately, unlike our other interview subjects, there won’t be any way to know more about Alexandra. But you can sleep easy knowing that she is out there, somewhere, making the Wireless better, engineering her way to the next breakthrough technology.
