The research project was inspired by the principles of ethnography, defined by Merriam (1998) as a “study that focuses on culture and social regularities of everyday life.” I wanted to understand why the adolescents in a summer camp in Krasnoyarsk, Russian Federation tended to reject English learning, and they seemed not to like discussing cultural topics.

The evidence of the teenagers’ rejection towards English studies came from individual and informal interviews made by the camp leaders and me, to every teenager who applied for the program before the season started. These interviews asked for their opinions about learning the language.

Two reasons of their apparent dislike were identified: one parental and another socio-personal. Firstly, adolescents mentioned the fact that their parents advised them not to study English; but instead, subjects they deemed more useful for their professional lives, such as mathematics or science. Secondly, most students claimed they did not want to learn this language, because they were able to handle any circumstance with their “well-recognized” Russian mother tongue.