Taking stock of the year (spoiler alert: no 'successful success' in there) Flicking through TG channels, I came across posts in a ‘Yes, but’ format, where people reflect on the passing year, interspersing personal successes with setbacks. So, here’s my ‘yes, but’ year: Started hosting speaking club sessions for B2-C2 students Speaking clubs are one of my absolute favourite formats, so I’d long wanted to create one myself. And I did! I picked interesting topics, explored a whole raft of authentic materials in search of useful conversational language, and created thought-provoking questions. This year I held nine sessions on different topics — from space exploration to Christmas. And judging by the feedback I got, it was not in vain — the sessions were quite a success. You can read some feedback here But I still don’t know where I want to take the speaking club: keep having stand-alone sessions? Or combine them into a course with proper recycling? And do I want to grow it at all? If I do, how should I market it? No idea. Found reasons to get myself out of the house As a massive homebody, I’m perfectly fine staying in, but this year I made an extra effort to be social. I attended art exhibitions, speaking and book clubs (both offline and online), pub quizzes, and so many other events, which allowed me to meet the most wonderful people! I also kept exploring Moscow for its hidden and not-so-hidden gems. But, social or not, I almost completely gave up on sport. Last year I took so much pride in sticking to my workout routine religiously — regardless of my workload, I had four sessions a week. This year, if I had two workouts a week, it was a good week. And let me just say that not every week was a good one, sport-wise. Let a small slice of the Russian ELT community know I exist It may sound weird, but that was one of my goals — to grow my TG channel and become more visible on the teaching scene. Having taken part in a bunch of conferences, live streams, and podcasts, I certainly took steps to achieve that. I was also lucky enough to have friends and acquaintances who generously promoted my little channel on their blogs. I’m eternally grateful! But, much to my chagrin, my enthusiasm didn’t last. I was more or less active in this respect only at the beginning of the year — I spent the second half of it in survival mode, doing the barest of minimums. Taught individual students and groups A couple of my students passed their exams with great results, which you can check out here and here. This autumn I also started teaching three wonderful C1/C2 exam groups at my favourite English school. I picked new course books for this — Ready for C1 and C2 — and so far it’s been quite an enjoyable journey! But I didn’t manage to launch pair classes — people expressed interest, but something always went wrong: sometimes the levels didn’t match, other times the intensity of the course was too much, and so on. Instead, I started working with four students individually, which I don’t mind at all right now — love my students! Kept learning English This year, apart from doing a general English course, I’ve been honing my British accent, and I’m proud to say I can hear some improvement. I’m still not where I want to be accent-wise, but I’ve made peace with the fact that for me, English is a lifelong project at this point. If things take months or years, so be it. But, even though I’ve been studying quite a lot, for the past couple of months I haven’t been the most diligent student, to say the least — putting off homework and missing deadlines.