English as a leverage: Meet the Tutors Behind Our English Classes
We speak Python, Java, TypeScript, and many other programming languages. But collaboration is our true common language — and a lot of it happens in English.
That’s why we offer English classes to help our Softjourners feel more confident sharing an idea on a client call, explaining a technical decision, or jumping into a conversation with international teammates.
And that’s where our teachers make all the difference.
As September rolls in and many return to their studies for the final quarter of the year, we sat down with our four English tutors to learn more about their own language journeys, their teaching philosophies, and what they believe makes learning truly effective.
Olha Vershkova
How did your journey with English begin, and when did you realize you wanted to teach?
I guess it was my mum who got the ball rolling when she decided to transfer me to a better school. At that time, most schoolchildren began learning a foreign language in the 5th form, whereas the gymnasium my mum had in mind started from the 1st form. I was in the 4th form when she made that decision and found an English tutor for me so that I wouldn’t fall behind after switching schools. That’s how my journey began, I suppose. I immediately hit it off with my English tutor. I think she saw that I had a knack for languages and helped me develop my skills.
Another influential person in my life was my Uncle George, who moved to the USA as a boy, escaping the Second World War with his family. He used to visit us almost every year when I was at school and would always start conversations with me in English. Naturally, I wanted to impress him each time, so he motivated me to improve my English.
His job involved travelling all over the world, and he would send me postcards from Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and other countries, with a few sentences written in English on the back. I even had a special box where I kept them. I was truly enchanted by the idea of travelling the world and speaking English with people from different countries — that’s when my passion for travelling was born as well.
Later, we started exchanging letters and then switched to emails — all in English. I even remember asking my tutor to check my letters before sending them to my uncle, just so I wouldn’t embarrass myself.
We’re still in touch with my Uncle George, who is now 86 and retired, but continues to travel the world. We’ve had a few memorable trips together to Thailand, Portugal, and Mallorca. Ironically, when we meet, he asks me to speak Ukrainian, as he doesn’t have many people to practise it with.
Do you know any other languages? If you could "download" any new language into your brain overnight, which one would it be and why?
French was my second foreign language at university, and I reached around a B1 level, I’d say. However, I’ve been out of practice since then, so unfortunately my French has become quite rusty.
Nevertheless, I absolutely adore France — Paris in particular — as well as French cuisine, and I love listening to French music. My friends even say that I have a certain “French vibe” in the way I dress. If I could instantly download a new language, it would probably be French again — just to bring it back to life and finally feel confident using it while travelling around France.
Do you have any hobbies or activities that you enjoy at the moment?
Plenty of them, to be honest. In addition to my passion for travelling, I really enjoy gardening and have quite a few houseplants in my apartment. I don’t mind spending a weekend at my mum’s place trimming bushes, sowing flowers, or planting tomatoes. There’s something incredibly grounding about having your hands in the soil — it makes me feel calmer and more connected to nature.
Did you know that soil harbours microbes that can boost serotonin production — the hormone that lifts your mood and helps ease depression? So, in a way, getting your hands dirty really does make you happier. It’s like a natural antidepressant.
I’ve always been a fan of jazz — I collect vinyl records and, of course, love listening to them.
Another thing I truly enjoy is creating a beautiful atmosphere at home. I adore aesthetic interior details and have a bit of an obsession with unique dishware — nothing can stop me from buying a new cup or two. Setting the table nicely brings me so much joy these days. And my most recent hobby is LEGO for adults — especially their botanical and art collections.
3 words to describe your teaching style.
Supportive, easy-going, and therapeutic. I’m really interested in psychology, as well as well-being and mental health. Some of my students even say that our lessons feel a bit like therapy sessions — they leave feeling uplifted. I guess that’s my little secret.
Teacher’s Playlist
To listen: TED Talks Daily on Spotify and Bossa Nova Mood — perfect upbeat vibes for mornings or work, with inspiring lyrics that remind me of daily affirmations.
To read: online magazines such as Happiful, The Everygirl, and The New York Times, especially articles by Christina Caron on mental health
To watch: Vogue interviews on YouTube — especially 73 Questions and Off the Cuff with their rapid-fire format. They’re great for training listening skills. And if you don’t want to embarrass yourself by mixing up “Your Majesty” and “your emergency” when addressing a royal person — watch Bridgerton. You’ll hear “Your Majesty” and “Your Highness” about a thousand times.
Marian Tverdokhlib
How did your journey with English begin, and what was the exact moment you realized you wanted to teach?
I’ve always been good at languages, and I think it’s just genetic. My dad speaks six, and my mom speaks three foreign languages. Both my parents taught languages at school, my sister taught French, and I taught English at a university.
There was never a moment in my life when I was like, “I want to be a teacher.” It just happened — I guess it’s in my nature. When someone makes a mistake, and I don’t necessarily mean a linguistic one, I just feel this urge to correct them. I’ve always been this way.
Do you know any other languages? If you could "download" any new language into your brain overnight, which one would it be and why?
I also speak French and German because these were the languages I studied at university and practiced abroad.
If I could “download” any new language into my brain overnight, I guess I would choose Sindarin. This is the language of the Grey Elves, which was constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien. Why? Just for fun.
3 words to describe your teaching style
If I had to describe my teaching style in three words, they would be: adaptive, engaging, and evidence-based.
"Teacher's Playlist": your go-to music, podcasts, books, or movies.
When it comes to music, I can’t really recommend the music I listen to to my students because I mainly listen to a lot of hardcore, deathcore, and mathcore. I guess others around me just call it “heavy metal with dudes screaming and growling,” and I understand it’s not for everyone.
However, I reckon that no matter what music you listen to, you can use it to learn a language to some extent. Features of connected speech, pronunciation, grammatical constructions, and some new vocabulary — you can find all of this in songs.
So whatever you like to listen to, listen to it in English.
I guess this would be the leitmotif of my message to anyone who wants to master a language: find something you like doing and just do it in that language.
It could be any hobby — music, books, theatre, opera, YouTube, or huddles in Slack — anything you’re interested in.
Oksana Romanovych
How did your journey with English begin, and when did you realize you wanted to teach?
My journey with English was mostly self-directed, starting in a small town in the 1990s, when access to tutors was limited and learning opportunities were not as widespread.
I first became fascinated by English through songs and hearing people speak it — it felt truly captivating and almost magical to me. Over time, this passion turned into a self-learning path that I followed with curiosity and persistence.
Later, at university, I met inspiring teachers whom I deeply admired. They showed me how meaningful and empowering teaching English can be. That was the moment I realized I wanted to become an English teacher myself — not only to teach, but also to share the freedom, confidence, and opportunities that English had given me.
Do you know any other languages? If you could “download” any new language into your brain overnight, which one would it be and why?
I speak Czech, which I learned in childhood because I have relatives in the Czech Republic whom I visited often. I also understand a little German.
When I travel, I always try to learn a few phrases in the local language to show respect for the place, its people, and its culture. For example, in Paris I did my best to speak French with locals, even though I only knew a few basic phrases.
Do you have any hobbies or activities that you enjoy at the moment?
I’m a mother of two, and they are my hobbies, activities, and a constant source of inspiration.
Describe your teaching style in one sentence.
I focus on creating a fun and motivating learning environment where students feel confident to speak, make mistakes, and improve through meaningful practice.
I believe it’s important to remember that everyone has a different pace. Learning a language is not about reaching some final destination — it’s about practising it and maintaining your level.
And along with English, people often acquire another useful skill: small talk. It may seem minor, but it’s an important part of communication and culture.
I have a lot of experience in translation, including simultaneous interpreting, so I pay close attention to pronunciation and to the cultural phenomena behind the language. Sometimes understanding why people say something a certain way is just as important as knowing the words themselves.
Teacher’s Playlist
I love starting my day with stories by Ellie’s Ukrainian Life on Instagram. She shares useful tips on British English and is also so full of love for Ukraine.
And when it comes to dictionaries, I often recommend the Longman Dictionary to my students.
Mykola Kisil
How did your journey with English begin? What motivated you to study it, and when did you realize you wanted to teach?
My journey with English began in the late 1980s, during Perestroika. The Iron Curtain was lifting, and suddenly Western music was everywhere — some on official records, some on cassettes copied so many times the tape hissed almost louder than the song. For a schoolboy in Ukraine, English stopped being a subject on the timetable and became a key to something bigger.
Music did most of the work. Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Bad were the first shock. Then came Queen, Scorpions, Depeche Mode, Dire Straits, A-ha, Modern Talking — records and tapes passed around from friend to friend.
We didn’t just listen; we wanted to know what the songs were about. A whole generation of us learned our first real English from handwritten lyric sheets, with someone’s older cousin filling in the words no one else could catch.
Then came the video salons — small rooms with a VHS player, a television, and a queue of teenagers waiting to watch Terminator or Back to the Future. The Russian voice-over was famously nasal and monotonous, but underneath it you could always hear the original English track.
That’s where I first learned how Americans really sounded — not the careful textbook voice, but the real thing, with its shortcuts, slang, and rhythm.
Books came next. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Poirot showed me how neatly English can carry logic. O. Henry added irony and the pleasure of a final twist; Jack London gave me something different again — the cold of the Klondike, the salt of the sea, the voice of a man living on the edge. Reading these authors in the original felt completely different from reading them in Soviet translations. The translations were accurate but somehow flat. That was when I understood something simple: if you want the real thing, you have to go to the language it was written in.
Teaching came even earlier than the language. Back in school, I was the classmate people came to when something wouldn’t click — a maths problem, a chemistry formula, a tricky paragraph in history. I noticed fairly young that I liked that kind of work: taking something complicated and finding a version of it that fits inside another person’s head. When English arrived in my life, it simply gave that instinct its natural subject. By the mid-1990s, teaching English wasn’t a question of if, but of where. I’ve been at it ever since.
Do you know any other languages? If you could “download” any new language into your brain overnight, which one would it be and why?
Besides Ukrainian and English, I’m fluent in Russian — a legacy of the Soviet school system rather than a choice. If I could “download” a new language overnight, I’d choose Chinese. Not for business or travel, but for something more interesting: I want to see what happens to my thinking when it has to live inside a completely different writing system and a tonal language.
Chinese doesn’t just describe the world in new words; it organises it in a different grammar of categories. Tones turn pitch into meaning; characters carry layers of history inside their shape; a sentence can work without the tenses and plurals that European languages insist on.
Do you have any hobbies or activities that you enjoy at the moment?
Most of what I do in my spare time turns out to be a version of what I do in class — taking something complicated and finding a way to make it fit in another person’s head, just for different audiences.
I run three Telegram channels. One, in Ukrainian (@ohliad), analyses current political events — my ongoing attempt to explain, first to myself and then to my readers, what’s actually happening and why it matters.
The second, also in Ukrainian (@svitohliad), covers ideas worth knowing from science, psychology, and history — the kind of things you’d want to share with an intelligent friend over coffee.
The third is in English (@enfol), for upper-intermediate learners and above, anywhere in the world — small, useful pieces of vocabulary that don’t usually appear in textbooks.
Writing for these channels keeps me sharp: it forces me to think an idea through clearly enough to fit into around eight hundred characters.
I read whenever time allows. But the real joy — the one that outranks everything else — is my two grandchildren, aged one+ and four+. Watching a small person build their world from scratch is one of the most fascinating things I know. They are learning not just words, but how to process and interpret events. It’s fascinating to watch them navigate the stages of self-awareness — seeing that shift from the early “I-am-the-universe” phase to the realization that they are a part of a much bigger world. They are learning how to express what they feel, how to evaluate people — including me. A four-year-old’s honest opinion of you is worth more than you might think.
After three decades of teaching students, I notice I’m now doing less teaching and more learning — from two of the smallest and sharpest observers I’ve ever met.
If you had to describe your teaching style or your classes in one sentence or three words, what would they be?
My teaching shifts with context — a university lecture, a private tutorial, and a Softjourn class are three different crafts. The Softjourn ones are closest to what I’d call my natural register: two curious people.
To me, a student is never just a learner; they are a unique world. I’ve come to realize that their personal experiences are a rare treasure I get to share in. I find myself travelling through their lives — their interests, their passions, and their struggles. It’s a process of living a thousand lives through theirs, and that’s a far greater reward than any textbook could offer.
Three decades in, I still find that every student leaves me with something I didn’t know before. The English quietly finds its place inside that connection.
Teacher’s Playlist
I’ll be honest: I’m a terrible person to ask for a “Top 10” list. I’ve always found the idea of a single favourite book or song a bit limiting. To me, content is like fuel — you choose it based on the journey you’re taking that day.
My “playlist” is a rotating shelf. If I’m writing for my Telegram channels, I’m likely deep into long-form analytical podcasts or non-fiction that dissects history and psychology. If the weather is grey, it might be smooth jazz or 80s nostalgia; if I need to focus, it’s classical or ambient silence.
Any shortlist I gave you today would be obsolete by tomorrow, because my only real “go-to” is curiosity. I don’t look for favourites; I look for things that make me see the world from a slightly different angle than I did yesterday.
