Ludmila Blashchishchena

My name is Lyudmila Blashchishchena and I am one of the first students of Yelena Girich. I immigrated to the United States in 1998 with no English at all. When I just arrived, I started to attend IRCO and evening ESL classes. I studied all the new words, and tried to speak English to Americans. I learned more than one thousand various words in one year and was so proud of myself. But when I tried to speak, people didn’t always understand me and asked to repeat several times. It hurt my feelings so much. I could not understand why they always asked me: “Pardon?” A little later my friend suggested to take classes in “DALY Communications, LLC” and I was very lucky to meet such a gifted teacher as Yelena Girich, and to start English classes with her. It was very hard for me because the lessons were only in English and speaking Russian was prohibited. But at the same time the lessons were very interesting and effective.

In my opinion,Yelena has a very good method of teaching that helps people to learn English fast. First of all, she makes students retell different stories and other texts and tell about the previous day. “What did you do yesterday?” Your brain starts to work and even if you have difficulties speaking English, you have no choice but answer using simple words and expressions. Secondly, she uses short video stories during the class and then she makes students retell everything they have seen. Besides, after all, students have to write the composition about the video story and at the end very often to continue the story and give an opinion on it. By doing this, my writing improved very much, since I liked to write the end of the stories, using my imagination. After that, she corrects all the mistakes and explains them according to English grammar rules. She teaches English grammar and explains it all in Russian, which is very important.

In one year of a very hard study (every day 5-6 hours), I realized that I was able to understand people very well and people could understand me. I started listening to music, radio, watching movies in English, and reading magazines, and newspapers as well. With my new ability to speak on the phone I was able to solve any problem that occurred.

I would like to express my appreciation to the teacher and the school. It was an unforgettable experience and I am very grateful for that.