On March 24th, Anglistikos akademija marked its 10th consecutive session, welcoming students from Vilniaus Tuskulėnų gimnazija for an afternoon of engaging educational activities. The event featured two speakers.
Professor Francisco Martin Miguel from the University of Oviedo opened the session by taking students on a journey through the power of the English language and the technicalities of reported speech. He began by highlighting why mastering English is so important today. The language is everywhere—from travel and the internet to international workplaces—serving as a bridge between people and cultures. The professor actively involved students by inviting volunteers to read dialogues aloud. From there, he introduced reported speech in a clear and engaging way: Have you ever told a friend what someone else said? That is reported speech—something we use every day without even realizing it. He guided students through its grammatical structure, explaining tense changes, pronoun shifts, and transformations in time and place expressions. He also addressed common mistakes, such as confusing say and tell or overlooking tense changes. To bring the topic to life, he showed a clip from the British sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, allowing students to see reported speech in a real and humorous context. The key takeaway was that mastering reported speech enhances communication skills and enables one to act as a mediator between people, texts, and cultures. As the professor noted, when words travel well, people understand each other better.
In her presentation, “Who’s ‘In’ and Who’s ‘Out’? Constructing Belonging in Music,” Greta Maslauskienė explored the idea that language is more than a tool for communication—it is a powerful means of constructing identity and defining belonging. She began with an interactive activity: each student received a slip of paper with a secret word and was asked to find others with the same word using only non-verbal communication—gestures, sounds, and body language. The room quickly came alive as students formed groups, demonstrating how identity and belonging are often signaled without words.
The session then shifted to music. Students listened to “Cool Kids” by Echosmith and took on the role of language detectives, analyzing pronouns and group labels to determine who belongs and who does not. Who are the “cool kids”? Who is the “she” observing from the background? Who is the “he” wishing to fit in? Through discussion, students explored how language constructs in-groups and out-groups, and how words like “seems” and “wish” reveal uncertainty and unattainable ideals. The key takeaway was a powerful and relatable insight: the people we perceive as “cool” may be thinking the same about us. Language not only reflects identity—it actively shapes it.
Prepared by Viktorija Timpaitė, English Philology, Year 4.
