Beginning Georgian

Mzia Shanava is a linguist and teacher. She studied Georgian language and classical studies at the Ivane Javakhishvili University in Tbilisi, Georgia. She taught Georgian and classical language courses, worked at the Academy of Sciences of Georgia, was a television journalist, and covered culture and science for Georgian National Television. After immigrating to the United States, she worked as a Georgian translator for the Department of Justice and as a Georgian instructor for the Department of Defense, where she taught Georgian to the diplomatic corps and developed a short course in modern Georgian. In her teaching, she uses a mixture of three methodologies—immersive, communicative, and audio-lingual models. However, she does not suggest that teaching should be approached following a particular method as a set of recipes, but on the contrary, as a dynamic and reflective process, which means a constant interaction between curriculum, teacher, students, activities, methodology, and teaching materials. She believes that careful evaluation of the classroom, planning, and responding to the needs of each student is the best way for curriculum, teacher, and student development. Her extensive communication skills (fluency in five languages) and cultural background enable her to freely navigate linguistic labyrinths, simplify the notoriously difficult Georgian grammar, and teach the language as a system.

Professor Stephen Jones received his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His books include Socialism in Georgian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883-1917 (Harvard University, 2005), and Georgia: A Political History Since Independence (I.B. Tauris, 2012). More recently he edited with Neil MacFarlane, Georgia from Autocracy to Democracy (University of Toronto Press, 2020). Professor Jones became a Foreign Member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences in 2011 and received an honorary doctorate from Tbilisi State University in 2012 and from Ilia State University in 2018. He is Director of the Program on Georgian Studies at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard. He is also a member of the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) since 2009 and vice president for the last six years.