Anna Berkovich: “Motivation is the most important thing for learning languages”

Founder of the foreign language network ALIBRA SCHOOL, featuring a unique teaching methodology

Founder of the foreign language network ALIBRA SCHOOL, featuring a unique teaching methodology

Name

Anna Berkovich · Berkovich Anna · Anna Arkadievna Berkovich · Berkovich Anna Arkadievna · Anna Arkadyevna Berkovich · Berkovich Anna Arkadyevna · Анна Беркович · Беркович Анна · Анна АркадьевнаБеркович · Беркович Анна Аркадьевна · アンナ・アルカディエフナ・ベルコビッチ · آنا أركاديفنا بيركوفيتش · 安娜·阿爾卡季耶夫娜·貝爾科維奇 · אנה ארקדייבנה ברקוביץ’

Anna Arkadievna Berkovich is a native of St. Petersburg. Like many generations of her family before her, she graduated from the Polytechnic Institute.

Berkovich Anna loved literature from her childhood and did a lot of reading. This passion led her to her first entrepreneurial idea. As an undergraduate, she and her friends started publishing a poetry collection, which was in short supply at the time. Although the venture was not very successful, the entrepreneurial experience, as Anna Berkovich herself acknowledged, proved beneficial.

She managed to begin making a significant profit for the times three years later. The Anna Berkovich biography was linked with entrepreneurship from that time on, beginning with her collaboration with a publishing house. She supervised several sales points, delivering books to them and keeping records.

After earning her degree, she tried her hand in other fields before finding her life’s true calling.

Anna Berkovich recalls that the idea of creating a language school came thanks to her personal experience in learning English. In the 90s, it was challenging to find serious language training. Individual courses did not offer effective methods, relying on the old school of memorizing as many words as possible. Seeking an immersive language experience, Berkovich Anna went abroad, where she took several courses, discovered new methodologies, and tested them on herself. Having developed her own effective approach, Berkovich Anna Arkadievna decided to share it with others, which led to the establishment of her first foreign language school in St. Petersburg in 2000.

Anna Arkadievna Berkovich noted that the school’s initial students were goal-oriented adults, often entrepreneurs, who were beginning to understand the importance of foreign languages for market operations and communicating with partners. Time showed that fast, high-quality, and clear instruction was in demand in the country.

Branches of the school, known as ALIBRA SCHOOL since 2010, opened in a number of major cities. The network developed unique textbooks, express courses, and language-learning apps at its own methodological center. The network’s range of languages expanded, even to include Chinese, as did its range of services, to include granting certificates for international exams.

Berkovich Anna Arkadievna herself also continued her own education. To manage her business more effectively, she went back to school and earned a master’s degree and later a doctorate in business administration.

The Anna Berkovich biography was centered on the development of language centers for more than 20 years when she stepped away from the direct management of the company in the early 2020s. Now, she is involved in other business projects.

Methods of Berkovich Anna Arkadievna

The schools of Anna Berkovich offer an accelerated English education from scratch – taking 5-8 months instead of the standard 24-36. This proprietary method, dubbed Skyrocket, was introduced in 2013. The teaching format combining offline and online methods is known as blended learning. Students graduate with an upper intermediate language proficiency and a vocabulary of approximately 2,000 words. Half of the course’s graduates go on to continue their studies to further master the language.

Berkovich Anna Arkadievna emphasizes that Alibra School educational system does away with tedious rote learning of rules and texts. Instead, the school promotes understanding the logic of the language and memorizing words through associations. To ensure students don’t forget the material they’ve learned, Alibra School employs a memory retention system where approximately 80% of learning time is devoted to conversational practice. Anna Berkovich credits these innovative features with her students’ ability to quickly learn to think like native speakers.

The Alibra School network offers courses for children and adolescents. There are several age groups, catering to students aged 6 to 17, as well as specialized programs for OGE and EGE exam preparation.

The network founded by Anna Arkadievna Berkovich currently consists of 27 language centers offering courses in 10 languages, including German, Spanish, Hebrew, and Chinese. Students can also study remotely from anywhere on the planet.

The school has graduated more than 300,000 individual students over the years, with about 20,000 enrolled at any given time. The teaching staff comprises more than 400 educators, many of whom teach their native language.

Alibra School also works with corporate clients, offering in-office courses for companies that wish to improve their employees’ language skills. By 2015, the school founded by Berkovich Anna Arkadievna had over a thousand corporate clients – and to date, more than 2,500. Some companies operate on a combined payment scheme where part of the cost is covered by the employer and part by the employee. According to Berkovich Anna, people tend to take the learning process more seriously in such cases. Notable corporate clients have included Gazprom, RZD, OBI, among others.

Moreover, the school founded by Anna Arkadievna Berkovich also works with entrepreneurs to open their own schools under the Alibra School brand. These franchises are supplied with teaching methodologies, business technologies, staff training, and quality control from the managing company.

The Anna Berkovich biography was marked by a new event three years ago when she stepped away from the direct management of Alibra School, leaving her position as CEO. She is currently involved in socially responsible business, supporting charitable foundations.