Anna Ohoiko - Founder of Ukrainian Lessons and 5 Minute Ukrainian

Feb 14

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Welcome to this episode of Zavzyzatist podcast from Ukrainian San Antonio. If you ever wanted to learn Ukrainian and didn't know how to do it, please join this episode of the Zavzyatist podcast where we chat with Anna Ohoiko, the founder of Ukrainianlessons.com website and podcast. Anna graduated from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the most prestigious university in Ukraine, with a degree in Ukrainian philology and has been helping people around the world learn Ukrainian. In addition to being an educator, Anna is also an entrepreneur. In this episode we discuss how her zavzyatist, commitment, and creativity helped her start her business and make it successful.

See below the full trascript of our conversation with Anna Ohoiko.

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Anna Ohoiko

Ukrainian Lessons

5 Minute Ukrainian

Welcome to this episode of Zavzyatist podcast from Ukrainian San Antonio - the show where we meet and dive into the stories of incredible people who work to preserve and enrich Ukrainian culture and history in addition, we explore the personal leadership tenacity invites to action behind the stories of our guest each episode is an inspiration to find new ways to engage with the cleaning culture information.

Olena Khrystyuk: Hi Everyone and welcome to this episode of Zavzyatist podcast from Ukrainian San Antonio. I'm your host Olena Khrystyuk and today we have a pleasure of talking with Anna Ohoiko, the founder of Ukrainianlessons.com podcast and blog, a resource for the foreigners to learn Ukrainian and the website called navsi200.com, a resource for Ukrainians to prepare for the high school exit exams. Anna speaks 5 languages, and her mission is to share the Ukrainian language and culture with the world by means of the digital technology. Anna, welcome to this podcast.

Anna Ohoiko: Pryvit, d’yakuyu, hello, hello! Thank you Olena Khrystyuk. I'm very excited to be here.

Olena Khrystyuk: Thank you so much! Your website and podcast are for people who want to learn conversational everyday Ukrainian. How much Ukrainian do you need to know to start your lessons?

Anna Ohoiko: You need to know a little bit of the alphabet. You should be reading Ukrainian a little bit to start with a podcast. You can't really learn the alphabet on the podcast. But we do offer a series of free videos to learn the alphabet and practice each sound, how it sounds, how it looks, and then you can start with the first episode, which is a conversation like ‘How are you?’ and ‘What is your name?’, and so on.

Olena Khrystyuk: So, you start with the basics from hello. What kind of conversations people are having on the fifth season and how fluent are they?

Anna Ohoiko: People start with the basics, slowly moving to grammar, which covers cases and tenses. And then by the third season we cover all the basics and then start advancing. I would say we start having some conversations which are more intermediate. That's a series of conversations between and American girl Kristen who comes to Ukraine. She explores Ukraine, meets Ukrainians, and she starts her life in Ukraine. That’s Season 3. And then from Season 4, we only have Ukrainian on the podcast. These are slow Ukrainian episodes, where I talk about different aspects of Ukrainian history, culture, and some famous people. And Season 5 is basically that plus some short interviews I have with Ukrainians at slow speed.

Olena Khrystyuk: It's very comprehensive. If you finish 5 sentences, you can travel to Ukraine and can get around, basically?

Anna Ohoiko: Yeah, you can already get around after 2 seasons. People who are a doing Season 4 and 5, they're usually already fluent in Ukrainian. They've been studying and they already can speak Ukrainian well. And now they just want to improve, learn new words, and they want to learn something new about Ukraine too. That's why we have Season 4 and 5.

Olena Khrystyuk: Got it. Your podcast is an audio learning experience. What do you offer on the website?

Anna Ohoiko: We also have different articles, blog posts, infographics for people to see visually how things look like in Ukrainian. For example, endings of the verbs or nouns, as well as different combinations of vocabulary on different topics. We also have series of articles in English about Ukrainian culture, traditions, and history. We just started to develop more our YouTube channel. There will be a short video about grammar and vocabulary that are designed for self-study, as well as, for universities and schools that teachers can use. Because I found there is not much material like this online and that's why we decided to proceed with videos too.

Olena Khrystyuk: You were talking a lot about teaching. And that's what you do on a podcast, YouTube, and your website. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what prepared you to teach Ukrainian?

Anna Ohoiko: I've always had a thing for languages. I like learning them and I like studying the concept of language in general. That's why I was lucky to follow my passion after high school and study philology, language, and literature in Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine.

Olena Khrystyuk: It's a wonderful school.

Anna Ohoiko: Yeah, I must say this university, in particular its environment and people, really shaped my view on things and, especially, the creative and critical approach. It was amazing. I went there for my bachelor's and master's degrees in linguistics. That's how I also started to teach Ukrainian to Ukrainians and foreigners. Thanks to my professor I found my first students from Canadian Embassy in Ukraine. At the university I also studied the history of textbooks. I studied different textbooks that are out there and, of course, I had an idea to create my own textbook in the future. And maybe from that point I decided to also think about technology and how we can do things in a different way than just a textbook to create something more modern and applicable for people all around the world. And that's how I came up with blog and then podcast.

Olena Khrystyuk: There are a lot of books out there on how to teach English as a second language. But I've never heard anything about how to teach Ukrainian to foreigners. Ukrainians learn Ukrainian. Maybe Russian speakers or Polish speakers can pick up Ukrainian easily. Is there a method out there that you follow specifically on how to teach Ukrainian to foreigners? Or do you kind of see how other foreign languages are taught to foreigners and follow that process?

Anna Ohoiko: So that's a good question. I use a combination of different methods. I did learn the method of teaching English. In fact, I took a course on how to become an English teacher but then I decided to use that knowledge and apply it to teaching Ukrainian. I was like ‘Why not?’ There is audience and I see the potential in this.’ So, I started to learn more about those methodologies and applied them. I mostly use the communicative method, which I used during classes. But creating digital resources requires a different approach so there I use different methods. I do use some English in my explanations, for example. I use the method of spaced repetition, which is a great learning technique applicable to different kinds of learning. I use it in my podcast episodes. For example, we have review episodes where we repeat again the things we learned before. And I use it for flash cards we offer as a premium material on the podcast. Yeah, it's a combination of different methods.

Olena Khrystyuk: English was also my second language and I tried learning other languages as well. Spaced repetition is a very effective way of learning.

Anna Ohoiko: We have two podcasts: Ukrainian Lessons podcast, it’s our main series and it has five seasons, and 5 Minute Ukrainian, our new podcast.

Olena Khrystyuk: What is the difference between these two podcasts?

Anna Ohoiko: The regular series is a step-by-step process. You just start from the beginning, or you pick up at the level you want to start at. You do this like a course and the episodes are longer at least 20 to 30 minutes. Each class can take a week to learn, listen to the episode, practice, and then listen to it again. While a 5 Minute Ukrainian are small episodes which are like tiny workouts for you that you can do when you will go for a walk, a run and you have this 5 minute that you can just dedicate to a quick conversation in Ukrainian or you can review some words. It’s a quick recap of some of the most important situations like meeting with Ukrainian parents or talking to a taxi driver or booking a table at the restaurant. My idea is that when a person is in Ukraine, he or she could just listen to this podcast episode five minutes right before she must do something. For example, like right before going to a restaurant, she could just listen to this podcast episode before.

Olena Khrystyuk: That's a really good idea for using new technology. Because back in the day people used to have these little conversational books, they carried along with them. Nowadays you can listen to podcasts. It's a great idea. I really like it.

Anna Ohoiko: Actually, I now live in Sweden and I'm learning Swedish. So, this idea came to my mind when I was walking to the post office, and I was still not sure how and what to say in Swedish to pick up my parcel. I thought, if only I had a podcast that would give me 5 minutes episode with useful phrases at the post office in Sweden. And that's how I came up with the idea of I should do the same for Ukrainian.

Olena Khrystyuk: You found, through a personal experience, a need that's not been answered. You also mentioned that one of your first students in Ukraine were Canadian embassy employees. Today you offer your class online and it’s all digital. Who are the people today who listen to the podcast and where do they come from?

Anna Ohoiko: I keep in touch with my audience a lot. Every day I receive emails from them and try to communicate with my audience. There are many people now who moved to Ukraine for work or studies and there is a growing number of students from abroad in Ukraine, especially in medical schools. This is very common and not many people know about it. That's the first reason which is very motivational because you come to Ukraine you must speak the language, otherwise you'll be lost and not everyone speaks English. A lot of documentation is in Ukrainian, so even Russian wouldn’t save you. And another reason is personal interests. Let’s say heritage learners, people who have family who are Ukrainians in Canada or the United States, or just people who are interested in Ukraine somehow. In my personal experience the biggest reason to study Ukrainian is love. Many learners have Ukrainian partners, wives, or husbands, and they want to impress their partner. But most importantly, I guess, it's important to learn Ukrainian when you already have kids and kids learn Ukrainian as native language that's why you want to communicate with them. Also, if you want to communicate with the relatives, like parents. Many people start learning Ukrainian right before they are going to meet the parents in Ukraine. Parents often don’t speak English fluently and they need to communicate with them. Because of these types of situations, people start learning and it a huge motivation for them to stick with it for a long time.

Olena Khrystyuk: Clearly you have a lot of audience who are adults. Do kids take your classes, or do you have special classes for children?

Anna Ohoiko: I don't teach kids, but I had teenage students and I had people who were 70-80 years old. It's a very, very broad range. Same with the podcasts. I think people of all kinds of ages listen to them.

Olena Khrystyuk: I think Ukrainian would be difficult to learn because of conjugations of nouns and verbs. It's even more difficult than Spanish. What do people struggle the most when they learn Ukrainian? Is it grammar, pronunciation, colloquial sayings?

Anna Ohoiko: When people just start learning they are frightened by the alphabet. It's different. At the end of the first week of learning Ukrainian, most of the people say that the alphabet is easy because every letter is pronounced the same way in Ukrainian unlike in English. Grammar is the biggest challenge and if you ask people what their biggest problem is still in Ukrainian, it's probably going to be cases. We have seven cases in Ukrainian nouns. The cases can be in different forms and then each noun goes with an adjective that must be in different case too. So that's what it is very different from many languages and scary. But I always say that Ukrainians don’t mind if you're not going to conjugate your noun and if you're not going to put the last ending of the word right.

Olena Khrystyuk: I think anybody in any language really appreciates the effort because when you talk the language the people talk it really shows you care, and I think that's what people really want to hear from you. I wanted to talk about your blog. How do you come up with ideas for your blog? Because it's a good supplement to learning Ukrainian through your lessons.

Anna Ohoiko: As you know I speak several languages and I was learning them myself. I started was English which took me ten years or more. It was a very long process for some reason and at school it wasn't taught very well. And then French was hard too. I took a class, and it was not easy. I still can't say I'm super fluent in it. But since I started learning Spanish, for example, I started to use digital technologies for that. I started to use different kinds of blogs, podcasts, courses, and videos. And especially podcasts in Spanish really helped. It was fascinating to me how I started to learn Spanish just by listening to the podcast and soon enough I could have a basic conversation. While why I was learning English at school for 10 years and I still couldn't express myself and I was nervous about it. I noticed that this modern technology and resources online are well designed and that's where I took my inspiration for Ukrainian resources. Basically, I sit down, and I look at different to resources that are interesting to me as a learner in Spanish, French, Swedish, and Polish. I find the best ones and I try to do something similar in Ukrainian with specific things we have in Ukraine of course.

Olena Khrystyuk: Well, that's wonderful. You curate various online resources and pick the best and that’s how you teach Ukrainian.

Anna Ohoiko: Yea, something like that.

Olena Khrystyuk: What is the most popular Ukrainian phrase or most useful phrase that foreigners learning a podcast? The students come back and say ‘You know this really helps me out a lot when I'm out talking to Ukrainians’.

Anna Ohoiko: Interesting question. In one of the first episodes, I teach the phrase that is my favorite because it's kind of like my last name. So, it's my last name is Ohoiko, and the phrase is ‘ogho’. It's very easy, extremely easy and it sounds fun, I think. You use this phrase when you're surprised and want to say ‘wow’. But instead, you say ‘ogho’. It's fun and students love it.

Olena Khrystyuk: I didn't think about it but it's a really great place to learn. You speak five languages. What language do you use the most to teach Ukrainian?

Anna Ohoiko: In lessons, teachers try now not to use any foreign languages. If I’m teaching a class, I don't use any foreign language and that's what I'm trying to implement now in my YouTube channel. I try to put everything on the screen to show visually and to skip English. But in the podcast, of course, it's necessary to have some in-depth explanations of grammar. That's where I use English and I don't use any other languages.

Olena Khrystyuk: You are in season five. What are your plans? How do you see this class progressing? And what would you like to achieve with your podcast?

Anna Ohoiko: Right now, we have five seasons and after each season I'm considering just stop it and I ask my listeners for their opinions. Every summer I reassess and look what was done, how many listeners we have, how many reviews, do people want more. I just ask people. I send listeners a survey and ask them ‘What do you want to actually want?’ I just read all the answers and see if there is something that many people want, and I sit down and think about it. That's how I come up with future lessons. My process consists of two parts. First, I create a plan what I'm going to do and usually it's a big plan. For example, all 60 episodes of 5 Minute Ukrainian podcast. Second part of the process is just to work hard and these episodes.

Olena Khrystyuk: I'm sure your listeners would like to learn more because you produce quality product. I was really impressed with the quality of your digital platform. It's very easy to navigate and it’s very well done. You truly make it easy to learn Ukrainian. The name of our podcast is Zavzyatist, and I think the closest word in English is audacity. Zavzyatist describes someone who a lot of energy, who's very focused, doesn't stop, overcomes any barriers to achieve the goal. You are an educator and now with the podcast and YouTube videos you are an entrepreneur. How did you make that leap?

Anna Ohoiko: First, let me compliment you on the name of your podcast I think it's amazing. Zavzyatist is a very nice word and I think the zavzyata quality is really something I can describe myself when I'm working on this project. I had some entrepreneurial spirit in me since I was a kid. I remember I wanted to buy a bunch of sunflower seeds and bake them and then sell them. My first business idea was to sell sunflower seeds in ‘stakanchyky’ little glasses.

Olena Khrystyuk: You’ve had the desire to do your own from early on. You mentioned that one of the things I've learned at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy is creativity. I think clearly shows in your podcasting and the quality of your work. Because to be an entrepreneur you must have zavzyatist, but you also must be very creative. How do you cultivate this creativity?

Anna Ohoiko: I think creativity is a big part of the teaching process, right? To be a teacher is to find creative approaches to create something to get students interested and what you want to teach. I think especially when our attention is so much diffused between different technologies, social media, etc. you must get people to attracted by something. People get more easily attracted by cats and dogs and YouTube than learning. To make learning interesting you must be creative as a teacher. That's why it was essential when I started to teach Ukrainian. In fact, I had to be creative because there was no other way. There were just not too many resources available to teach so I had to find a way since I had a bunch of students. I had a bunch of students I was teaching online one-to-one classes for quite some time. That's how I started designing this material slowly and saw potential in creating something bigger out of them.

Olena Khrystyuk: It's a great lesson because life doesn't follow a straight line. It has curves and bends and along the way you collect all this knowledge and skills. And for you this podcast is culmination of everything you've learned and put together for this podcast and all that makes it such a quality product. So, thank you so much for that!

Anna Ohoiko: You're welcome. I want to add that creativity and passion are very great things. I want to stress that just to be smarter or passionate about something is not enough for success. I think what really matters is commitment to what you do and consistency. That's what happened when I launched the podcast. I've committed to be consistent in doing just one thing - posting of this podcast episodes weekly. And I did by offering a premium membership from the very beginning. That premium membership costs $59 and I've offered this membership from the very first episode. A couple of people, who are mostly my students, signed up for that. And that meant that I had to create materials and episodes every week because people already paid for it, and I was committed to do that. I was also committed to creating something of the very best quality because people paid for that, and I didn't want to disappoint them. That helped me to be consistent and committed, which I think is even more important than just passion.

Olena Khrystyuk: Your commitment was anchored by offering paid membership. Sounds like you created a motivator yourself.

I really enjoyed our conversation and I think your podcast is a great resource for people to learn Ukrainian. High quality - that's the thing. I was blown away how well-done is your podcast. You have passion for language, and you're truly committed. I assume you're a perfectionist.

Anna Ohoiko: I try not to be but, you know, it happens.

Olena Khrystyuk: Yes, and it really shows in your work. Thank you so much for doing that. It's a great resource. Wishing you more students, more people learning Ukrainian, and thank you for promoting Ukrainian. It is a wonderful thing! Anna, can you tell just a little bit more how people can find you and what do they need to do to find you on the web, YouTube, etc., and how they can sign up for Ukrainian lessons?

Anna Ohoiko: Sure, so we are Ukrainian Lessons, and you can find us by Ukrainian Lessons on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and just go to ukrainianlessons.com to see all our materials including free podcasts and YouTube channel. Ad also we have a little book 1000 Ukrainian words.

Olena Khrystyuk: Guys, please visit Anna’s website and happy learning!

Anna Ohoiko: Thanks so much. It's been a pleasure to talk to you.