Helgi Saar

I obtained the teacher’s profession in the Pedagogical Institute at the Tallinn Pedagogical Institute in the field of Russian language and literature. I worked as a Russian language teacher in an Estonian school and as an Estonian-language teacher in a Russian school. At the same time, I went to various language courses (English, German, and French). From 1975 to 2000, I published language teaching programs on Estonian Television (Travel English, English for Everybody, French – my love, Hej, Sverige! etc.). I also enhanced my knowledge in EBU foreign language teaching methodology workshops.

I taught Estonian to adult on the basis of both Russian and English language at Tea Language School in 2000-2008. I received the necessary new knowledge at the Levon Institite Language Immersion Methodology Course at the University of Vaasa in 2002-2004. I have been teaching Estonian at the Multilingua Language Center since 2008. In recent years, I have supervised Tallinn language clubs “Sähvikud” and “Rohelised” and have improved my knowledge at adult teaching methodology seminars.

In language teaching, I find it important to awaken students’ interest in the language and culture they learn. The teacher’s activity should not only be aimed at teaching individual words and grammar rules but how to link new discovered words and phrases to plain sentences and use them in spoken language. In my opinion, language learning is an interesting and fun activity. Let’s take this as learning a musical instrument because mastering it gives us a lot of fun, interesting encounters, and new challenges.