After hearing about the death of Alexei Navalny, I rewatched the absolutely brilliant Oscar-winning documentary film Navalny, and was gobsmacked once again at both his bravery and the story of his poisoning. He almost certainly knew he was a dead man as soon as he got on the plane back to Russia, but he went anyway.
What really struck me in the feels was that when he was preparing to give the final part of his interview (which included a message to the world in the event of his death) he was worried about what he considered his bad English. ‘I feel okay but I have enormous problems with my English‘
This is so ironic because right from the start of the documentary I (a native English speaker who also works as a teacher of English to professional adults) was really surprised at how good his English was. He spoke fluently, making jokes in English and even talking to his family in English. Yet he felt his English was really bad.
This is one of the biggest problems for the people I teach. They have excellent English but their low self-confidence regarding their English skills really hampers their delivery. Once we work on their confidence they feel their English has improved by leaps and bounds. But it is often the lack of confidence that was the issue in the first place, not the lack of language.
If you have not watched the Navalny documentary, I really recommend it. It sometimes feels like a spy thriller and you have to remind yourself that this really happened. Another good watch is The Salisbury Poisonings series about the 2018 Novichok poisonings in Salisbury.