Last time Dasha teached me Russian she made me read a part of a fairy tale. For our next meeting, she asked me to read some stories she had sent me before. I like reading and I love fairy tales, so it was exciting to read old Russian tales. She had translated the stories to me, so that I could read one sentence aloud and then there would be the English translation.
I started with the story of Ivan Tsarevits. It was only the beginning of the story, as the whole tale was so long. I did notice that reading became easier and easier when the story progressed and I just kept reading. The 1.5 pages long story took me over an hour to read, but I felt great after finishing it! The next day we met and I read the story to Dasha. She did correct some errors I had, but over all the reading went very well and I was very proud of myself. I was also very proud of my teacher, because she had taught me to read. Isn’t that amazing?
After reading the beginning Dasha told me the rest of the story. And imagine my suprise, when I realised that the story sounded familiar – too familiar. I had read it before, many many years ago, when I was a child. I had enjoyed it then, but it was even more enjoyable to be able to read it in Russian, though I didn’t understand it that much. But I did learn some silly new words, like a garden, a Firebird, a thief, a guard and so on. Perhaps not so useful, but for me they were very meaningful.
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