Ep.4: Coffee time with Dragana and Miljana from Go Speak Serbian!

We are Ivana and Maki, your hosts.

In this podcast, we discuss interesting details about Serbian language and culture from a

learner's and teacher's perspective.

We offer new and fun resources for learners of Serbian.

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So if you're ready, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the podcast.

Dobar dan svima.

Dobar dan.

And we have a special guest today in our show.

Go Speak Serbian is with us today, right Ivana?

Exactly. Actually, I just saw some of your videos on Instagram.

So you are Dragana and Miljana.

And if I'm correct, Dragana in Canada and Miljana in Serbia, probably.

In Poland. yeah i am the only one in serbia yeah

that's fantastic all the serbian people outside of

serbia and all the and maki is there for us right i'm representing you

guys here you know i think

this is really going to be important for some of our questions because you

know you are um now away

from serbia and it's really going to be good to talk about some things

that you appreciate about

serbia or like things that you used to love to do and so on

so i think this is going to be a good point.

But you are from Navisad, right?

Or am I mistaken?

Both of you? Yes. Yeah, originally, yeah.

From Navisad. And you used to work or you still work in the Language

Center, right? And then you had a thought of making Udemy courses,

which is a brilliant thought uh i i was

actually even thinking about doing that but man it's a lot of work it's

a lot of work but it's a

brilliant way to you know i think a lot of people focus on private

lessons and i think that's great

but it's also really good to have something saved there online and you can

always access it right so um yeah so these are our guests today and

um we made coffee so because it is moja kappa podcast

so everyone's up for a coffee hopefully and yeah and it's early not early

but it's morning at least

so it's a good time for coffee not for canada but for yeah it's

really early really early for coffee over there okay yeah as Ivana already knows

more I want to ask you how did you guys meet and like

are you just partners for work or were you friends before how did this

story begin

yeah just before we answer that question I just want to make a small

correction so we are no longer

working at that language center so that's that used to be the case I

don't want to say like maybe 10 years ago right okay so we were

there actually yeah almost yeah i think it's actually 10 years ago

um so we stopped working there uh and currently uh work separately

in um you know different

areas um i work in canada milena teaches serbian

in poland um but uh yeah the that's actually how we met through the

language center because we were colleagues there and yeah that's how the

whole story started so I just wanted uh kind of make a small

introduction and mediana can continue oh that's great yeah sure so that's where we

in novice sad we were at some point we just realized that we uh

met

we wanted to make some

kind of course books for serbian uh we used all of the possible course

books that we could find on our market but there was something missing you

know there was something that we that we

weren't completely satisfied with we also we had tons of our own material that

we were using you

know when we were preparing our own classes there and we kind of wanted

to put it all together to

make some kind of systematic thing and yeah that was that was our first

our initial thought to to make kind of the textbook for Serbian for beginners,

for actual beginners.

And then later, we just realized that why wouldn't we switch it to online

version, to something that we could do

online? Because just like we knew that one day, one day it's going to

be like the primary, primary, you know, way of teaching, like, like, unfortunately, these

two years already since the coronavirus started and um and yeah then we

thought about udemy uh um we we saw that they

there were already a couple of courses for serbian i think one or two

uh beginner courses and we

wanted to make something different so yeah even i was right when when she

mentioned that it that

we really took a lot of a lot of time and effort to make

it i think we were working on the on the first course, Dagen will

correct me, but I think it was almost for two years, just to

prepare the topics, to make a plan, to record videos,

to edit videos, to make all the additional material,

you know, PDF files with self-study worksheet

and glossaries and everything.

So yeah, it was a lot of job.

Also another course that we are just preparing right now,

pre-intermediate, also took us, I think, years for sure.

so yeah it's not something that you could do just overnight it's really it

really takes a lot of a

lot of effort yeah I think people are really gonna appreciate it because um

because you are putting

so much effort right and putting in so much effort so it's um and

it's really good for me as a learner

of other languages as well I think it's really important to have that you

have several options

on Udemy so sure there is one or two courses but you know maybe

some people benefit from different types of instruction, different way of explaining things.

So it's just really individual.

And I think, yeah, I think everyone's going to be really happy.

And I'm really happy that you're here because

I'm not a Serbian linguist, full stop.

Maki is a learner of Serbian.

So we're really happy to have

experts here because I don't, it's really difficult sometimes to answer Maki's questions because

I'm like, hmm, I don't know why, you know.

Don't worry, everybody has these moments, even Serbian teachers.

Sometimes you just, you cannot answer

to all of the questions, especially when students are really into the topic.

You're really into some specific grammar structure

and they ask you, why do you say this?

And we're like, hmm, okay, maybe, give me some time,

maybe next time I will talk about this.

But it happens rarely, of course.

You know, let's say most of the time we have already.

yeah but of course there are some very tricky questions very especially when it

comes to things

that you just don't think about you know

because it's your it's naturally no language so yeah but by the way as

a learner myself I'm super

curious about your courses and I'm going to check them later right now I'm

super busy with my

schedule but it's in my mind I'm really but after taking courses be ready

for my questions

oh wait maybe we can do like a follow-up episode that would be so

cool exactly yeah

okay um mark you wrote down some questions for them like i think i'll

take over the the um

listeners questions like viewers and you you can move on to the more like

kind of personal and like

yeah okay so i want to start with the strategy of your course so

you said you checked other books

other materials and there was always something missing so how did you come up

with a strategy Like, did you want to include all four skills like reading,

writing, listening, speaking together or what kind of missing part you feel then?

I'm curious. Yeah, I think like the first thing we noticed about the course

books that were existing at the time is that they seemed a bit outdated

and not perhaps engaging enough for students.

there was no kind of authentic material in them that students could connect to

so we always had

to supplement them with you know like newspapers and books and create

our own texts and dialogues

that and exercises that we would use in the classes so that was the

first kind of hunch we need something more up to date,

something more engaging,

something more modern

in methodology. And then the second hunch was also

we need something more adjusted to the level of the learner, because we noticed

that the course books were kind of like for beginners, but also would mix

like different materials that would be out of the level.

So to say of the students and students could not connect with it very

well. So that was our kind of desire to improve on these two points

primarily and also visually to make things visually and aesthetically appealing what we

were seeing at the time and the situation has improved now but still not

for all levels.

would say for beginner you know there is material out there course books that

I

are you know

up to these standards but for other levels there still could be an improvement

um so yeah i think

that these were like our three main points so uh for that reason miliana

mentioned that we created

also like some self self-study material but she can continue on how we built

on these things in

the course itself like how we try to make it visually appealing how we

try to make it like more authentic, more engaging for students.

And as for the skills, I would say we can cover

everything apart from the speaking in the courses, right?

So the speaking part is going to be missing

from an online course.

So that's just something I want to add and put it out there.

Of course, everybody can expect that.

But yeah, Milena, you can build on these, how we perhaps how we

like developed all of these and build them into our course.

Yeah. So just like Dragona said,

all the skills are there.

The only part that's missing,

there's just that, I mean, it's not doable to do this in this situation,

but that's why, I mean, we're not trying to say that this like type

of e-learning or online course or any kind of course

like this is the only thing that a student needs.

Of course, for us, I guess the perfect scenario will be the combination of

many different you know sources like so not only to to have an online

course but also to i mean it's always important to have to have a

human interaction you know some private lessons but nothing nothing is uh is worth

if you don't if if a student doesn't engage

you know apart from all of that so self-study is also very important so

i think that uh that's uh what we try to do in the course

is to is to make students do a lot of things by themselves.

So that's why we created this additional material which are these

worksheets that cover every topic, every unit that we have, so that they could

they could

practice more than just what they see, what they hear, what they you know

what they can read in an actual actual unit so I think that's that's

crucial about learning any general and any

any language in general so not only not only when it comes to our

course uh but yeah that's that's it so we try to we try to

cover uh mostly I mean the the the the typical topics that were

um suggested by I guess you know this common European framework for languages so

everything everything that comes there is related to the most important vocabulary,

most important topics in grammar structures is here, let's uh so we try

to follow these

guidelines um and um yeah i think i think that if something is missing

that's probably because we

thought it's um it's maybe a bit too high for one of these two

levels that we made so far so we're

gonna make we're definitely gonna make it for for our next course so of

course there are things like that but I think that uh that um for

self-study this this way of you know presenting things is

going to be it's going to be enough for our students seeing the reviews

on the like followers

and the the takers of these courses I think you are doing you have

done a great job I mean

I see those stars those nice reviews on your under your course on Udemy

and I'm like that's really a success.

I have never seen like a language course, like not like English or like

German or something, but really speaking language, getting that much like interest from others.

That was like, I wanted to congratulate you on that.

Thank you. Two years paid off.

Yeah.

I think there are two things you mentioned actually, Milena.

Yeah, now I forgot the name.

sorry um so I think one the first one is like it's very important

I think learn is one like a magical

spell to kind of like how do I get to and it's like no

you really have to have various sources

of of the language so or like wear various methods so it's great to

have something like that on Udemy

but also do not neglect certain other things right like there's there's only so

much you can learn from, I don't know, just reading, let's say, or just

sitting down and doing like certain

lessons, like you, it's your responsibility to actually diversify it and to practice

other things so this is just one part we always say like on our

podcast our podcast is envisioned

as kind of like a not really like a lesson it's just kind of

like a supplementary material where

we sit down and we kind of like chit chat and about certain things

right and we explain certain

things but uh we also there's cultural aspects and so on and but it's

just it builds up on on

what you're what you're already doing um and then the second thing is that

you have to like warm up your seat as we say right so you

have to do the work and I think it's um it's with kind of

anything I feel like even when I was like learning how to dance salsa

with

it was like you have to go home

and practice right so it's it's just it's it's at the end of the

day even if someone doesn't get as

far uh maybe with the course it's like but it's your responsibility to do

the other things and you

know to organize yourself and do the work so there's only so much you

can do you can give all of these things but at the end of

the day how you can only like do half like meet them halfway in

way learner's responsibility is much more for sure yeah but the beauty is you

a

do different things and

then you feel frustrated because you're still thinking about what to say in a

sec but the other

day everything just comes naturally so i think that's the beauty of using different

resources You don't see the result on one day or on one month, but

one day you're like surprised by yourself.

That's the weaning feeling at the end.

Yeah. Sorry. No.

Yeah. I think for foreign language learning, whichever language you're learning, I think it

always gets messier, you know, before it gets better.

And we've all went through these ups and downs where you feel like oh

i've mastered

something but then the very next day you feel oh no like i don't

know anything again because you

just try to express something new so it's always going in these um kinds

of like waves so to say

but as you said like at one point it you start reaching this plateau

and you feel okay now i'm control um so uh and hacking your brain

so to say with different approaches is also very beneficial

because then you know you get some information from the video lessons then you

get kind of

solidified with the worksheets then you put it into practice with speaking exercises in

one-on-ones and so on so i think this is what we try to do

your

with the with the course to uh give as much of like diversity of

material out there as possible in an online course right so we have

a video lecture we have these worksheets that Milena mentioned but then we also

have listening

exercises that you know just go with the audio and the worksheet itself and

then we have glossary

with like examples and exercises and then we also in the video lessons themselves

we also try to kind of shift the approaches as much as possible so

that we show some interactive exercises then we also have like animated lessons this

is like this was the probably most fun

making those so at the end of each unit we would provide like a

bonus animated lesson from like

an example of real life or what we call everyday Serbian so this would

be like a natural conversation with everyday phrases that they can catch, but basically

in a small kind of cartoonish format.

So yeah, just trying all of these.

And I would say in our second course,

we really, really built on the feedback that we received for the first course.

So yeah, we have some characters introduced in there, like the teacher characters and

student characters who follow the narrative throughout you know all of the units and

all of the grammar sections and so

on so yeah um that's smart yeah that's quite smart yeah okay

cool so from that i got your kind of

tips to our followers right combining all the resources out

there like videos audios uh

like articles stories and everything and the most important thing we should not forget

always try to enjoy I tell this to my students like even if it's

is

a boring article you try to make

fun of it you try something fun about it I mean this is what

I try to do at least and have you

guys ever listened to our podcast as a source for like culture and like

language points how do you see that and do you do you would just

suggest your uh students to listen to us

definitely i listened to some of them already uh and uh it's it's really

a good idea to to do this

kind of podcast because it's not only about the language and everybody knows that

so language is when a learner really wants to meet the country,

the culture, you have to combine all of these things.

And I really like when you were talking about the customs in Serbia, I had, you know,

some habits. And

I realized you also had some interesting guests.

I think I listened to that also to that podcast

with Ivana's boyfriend, if I'm right, because he was talking about his own thoughts

and

impressions about about Serbia and it's really really cool to hear many different people