For those of you that have not been with me from the beginning, or read back that far, you will not know how long Inkreadable has been around. Of course, you can go back to the first post to find out, but if you prefer the highlights stick around here. Inkreadable started as an organization to teach kids in the US to write and to love writing as much as I do. I had three classes and then my world turned upside down by my mom’s illness and subsequent death, and moving o Europe. I did maintain contact with some of the parents of the children that I taught, and over the years, had gotten a few referrals as well. I was contacted by one such parent a couple months back to let me know that they were coming to Amsterdam for a sports tournament. On Friday, I got to see Rohan, a young man whose dad found my website back in 2013. I was astonished to find that he still remembered me, and I think he was just as astounded to hear that I still had the stories he wrote and the cards that he and his sister Akaisha gave me. In a twist from my own college application experience, (I applied to twelve schools), Rohan only applied to one. He’ll be going to Tufts University in the fall. And he’ll be on a pre-med/biomedical engineering track. When I pointed ou that he would still have to write, he said “But I am not taking any English courses.” To which I replied: “Do you really think that English is the only place you need to write?” The suprise that filled his face was comical and I had a hard time not laughing out loud. It was great to reconnect with him and his family. The challenge will be to do the work to stay connected.
I have entered the summer slowdown period of teaching. I now have two clients with The English Center, both pronunciation clients. My Greek client and I have scheduled all of the lessons in the package. The second pronunciation client is from Slovakia and has a very thick accent. In my research, I discovered that speakers of Slovak and Slavic languages more generally, have a problem differentiating between the short vowels. I like to use a couple of resources for pronunciation including Ship or Sheep and the Advanced Pronunciation in Use. We spent the two hours just trying to reduce the vowels. The problem with this student is the next time I see her is the first week in September. In terms of private clients, George and Jerry were a late cancel because Jerry was exhausted as she had taken a high school entrance exam to get into the top high school in China. She placed 40. Out of 60,000, and qualified for the second round. I am still waiting to hear what that means for her. I finished up with my Japanese client but offered to stay in touch via Zoom to have conversation classes if she wants. It was a bittersweet ending as there is still a lot that I can teach her. My Polish client is back on my schedule as well and we have been doing a combination of grammar and idiom work. She struggles to understand if the idioms are work-related as was brought home this week. This week I had her do a reading exercise at a B2 level and she really struggled so in terms of reading. I think I need to take it down a level for her because a lot of the words at the B2 level in business-oriented English are psychology-based. It was a good learning experience for me because she did ask me if this really was her level. And I said well it is your level but maybe the subject matter is not. Shinwei and I are on a break as his cousin is in town. But when we meet next week we are going to do a furniture lesson that I will combine with the terminology of Architecture as well.
In terms of getting more clients, I have sent an email to my host to see if the translation has been uploaded and I can start advertising. As of this writing, I have not yet heard anything but I’m hopeful that by the end of this week, I’ll be able to start running campaigns. It’s very difficult to try to coordinate when everything that happens via your business is through different countries. My hosting is in Greece but my market is in the Netherlands. Which makes everything a bit more of a challenge than it needs to be. But it will get there and as a Greek friend says she’s 150% sure that I will start getting clients as long as I run an advertising campaign. Fingers crossed.
On Thursday I managed to get to my writer’s group due to a schedule change. If I ever doubted that I had found my tribe in 2016, those doubts were dispelled this week at my writer’s group. I did not know, dear reader, that I actually have a catchphrase. At the end of every meeting, I tell new members “This is who we are. This is what we do. My co-organizer and another member actually had a mug made with my catchphrase. I was so moved that I had to keep myself from crying. I’m glad that I have found at least part of my people here. Between book club crew and writing I think I’m set in Amsterdam.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadablr installment. But stay tuned. As always, there’s more to come.