NEWS

English-Language Students Keep in Contact

By Ashley Cleek

Special to The St. Petersburg Times

Tired of English classes held at universities, Russian students and professionals have taken to the Internet to find new ways of learning English. VKontakte, a Russian online social networking site, similar to Facebook, is now making it easier to find English language conversation groups in St. Petersburg.

VKontakte allows individuals registered on the site the opportunity to create groups based on their general interests. Speaking English is one of the most popular. One such group, called “I Speak English,” created in September, is described on its Vkontakte page as a club for “those who want to be able to converse fluently in English with foreigners.”

English-language student Katya Butomo founded the group after a disappointing search for English language conversation clubs in St. Petersburg. After returning from a trip to New York, Butomo realized “that the only way to improve her English was through constant practice,” but she could not find a suitable outlet in the city. Butomo noted that, while the Mayakovsky branch of the public library has three free discussion groups that meet for an hour and a half during the week, each attracts upwards of thirty to forty people, which she considered to be too many.

“There is often only one native speaker leading the discussion and too many people come, so you don’t get a chance to talk.” Other options, like the conversation group run by Language Link, can be expensive for students. “Many people, including myself, just can’t pay those kind of prices for classes,” Butomo said.

Better than simply word of mouth tactics, VKontakte allows grassroots conversation groups a forum to advertise and directly contact students and alumni. Like Facebook in its early stages, users are asked to select their university and department when registering on VKontakte. Once registered, they are immediately connected to other students and alumni who are registered under the same department and university. This was a conscious choice of VKontakte’s creator, Pavel Durov, a graduate of St. Petersburg State University. In an email, Durov said that he wanted to form the site specifically for the Russian university system “in order to help Russian students ‘see’ and ‘find out about’ each other.”

Facebook wouldn’t have originally worked for Russian students, Durov said, “because only students who had an email address at American universities could register.” Presently, VKontakte has over 130 million pages and over one million users visit the site daily.

The organization of users based on their department was a great help to Butomo when she was inviting people to join her group. Through VKontakte, she was able specifically to target philology students in St. Petersburg, the group of students “most likely to want to practice their English.”

While “I Speak English” is a private group, others, like “English Speakers!” are open to all VKontakte users. “English Speakers!” was formed by Dimitri Solomin and boasts that, “now, all who want to ask native English speakers questions have the opportunity.” The group’s message board, or “wall” shows strings of questions about everything from where to take language classes to how to use different phrasal verbs.

Yulia Khalemskaya, creator of the VKontakte group “English Teachers — get together!,” wrote in a message that she is “happy to have an opportunity to gather lots of interesting people” and that, while at first she invited them all herself, “now they find my community themselves.”

Furthermore, through VKontakte, these groups are able to exist and advertise for free, a plus for small, informal groups like Butomo’s, which is organized at her house.

Judging from the numbers, such groups are filling a long-standing void. “English Speakers!” is by far the most popular, with 13,740 members, while groups like “MSL English Readers,” a group for those who “like reading in English” has 859 members, and “I Speak English” has 582 members.

These numbers not only highlight the growing need for English language in Russia, but a growing initiative among Russia’s young people themselves to learn English. While most university students are required to take classes in phonetics, grammar, and business English, many students, like Marina, are looking for a way to practice their English outside of class.

“We have a conversational English class at the university, but the language is sort of artificial” Marina said. Marina has been on VKontakte for more than a year, and, when she saw the advertisement for “I Speak English,” she was immediately interested. “It is a way to learn slang, to talk with a native English speaker, to get over the language barrier,” she said.

The early response to such groups is overwhelmingly positive. Alya, a businesswoman and member of the “I Speak English” group that meets on Sunday nights, claims that she likes the group because “it’s informal.” She is able to speak “simple, everyday English” that she can use, and, she added, learn how to “use [expressions] correctly.” “I Speak English” does not teach grammar, though there is talk of adding exercises in the future. John King, a student and English teacher who runs the Wednesday night group, thinks that “homework would be helpful” but that “the laid back attitude is all right because most of the students are driven and want to learn.”

“I Speak English” has conversational classes every weekday from seven to ten at night and two classes on Sunday, one in the afternoon and evening. The classes average no more than six students and costs 300 rubles for a three-hour session.

Butomo says that this is only the beginning of her work to bring English speakers and Russians together.

“In the future, I would like to create a database on Vkontakte, or some other site, which lists the contact information of all the English language teachers in the city who would like to give individual lessons or run conversational groups. This would allow every one, both students and teachers, to get in touch with each other easily, without having to go through a school.”

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