Eremia Natalya Leonidovna (1948-2013) is a truly unique personality for Kokshetau and for science in Kazakhstan in general. Her name will always be a symbol of unbending will, combined with an extraordinary mind and fantastic perseverance in achieving high goals. A graduate of the Faculty of Foreign Languages of the Kok-Chetav Pedagogical Institute (by the way, it was in 1970 that the first full graduation of the English department took place), she reached unprecedented heights at her native university as a scientist and academic professor. Natalya Leonidov - na Yeremia, after her unfairly early death in June 2013, remains a favorite teacher of many generations of students and master's students, who reverently honor and carefully preserve the memory of their great Teacher to this day. “Teacher, teach me the difficult science of remaining human among people, loving the truth, and bowing before it alone. And so that life, even bending our body to the ground, can never break our spirit!” – this covenant is holy for the worthy followers of their great Teacher. How not to admire Natalya Leoni - the daughter of Jeremiah, how not to be proud of her achievements, unsurpassed to this day by anyone at her native university: in 1998, her name was included in the edition of the International biographical directory “Who is who among professional women”, in In February 1999, the International Research Council of the American Biographical Institute awarded her the world title “Woman of the Year.” And the name of the prestigious award “Honorary Gold Medal of the Second Millennium” speaks for itself. The homeland of this wonderful woman is the city of Soroki in Moldova, and she came to Kazakhstan following her husband, who was assigned to the resort of Shchuchinsk. 1970 Natalya Eremia (Sobolevskaya is her maiden name) is a graduate of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the Kokchetav Pedagogical Institute. She worked as an assistant at the English Department for three years, but she was talented and purposeful, confident in herself and her abilities, and knew for sure that a special, shining future awaited her. Natalya Yeremia completed her postgraduate studies at the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences in 1973, having managed to write a dissertation during her years of study on the topic “Principles of constructing a system of educational explanatory dictionaries” based on the material of English lexicography. She defended her dissertation in 1980, and in the same year she was elected head of the department of English philology, which she would head for ten years. The title of associate professor will be awarded to her by the USSR Higher Attestation Commission. In 1990, Eremia became an academic professor. On the eve of the collapse of the Union, candidate of philological sciences, specialist in English lexicography Natalya Leoni-Dovna will be awarded the title of excellent student of public education of the USSR. The life of a scientist is a constant search for truth; in all her research and research, Eremia tried to get to the very essence, and taught her students and undergraduates this depth of knowledge. She always strived for the youth she worked with to be more informed and closer to life. She advised me to take on new, hitherto unexplored topics for coursework and dissertations. 90 publications on the most pressing problems of English lexicography are the result of her participation in scientific conferences in Moscow, Leningrad, Almaty, Simferopol. Only noble people are truly grateful. Eremia accepted the Kazakh land with all her heart, fell in love with the melodic language of the steppe people, understood colloquial speech well, and herself tried to talk with students from the distant outback of the village in their mother’s language. As a linguist and lexicographer, she was well aware: the power of the Kazakh speech system cannot be translated, and the scientist’s developed intuition made it possible to feel at the molecular level the soulfulness and imagery of Kazakh speech, the language of her beloved people, who have a rare gift in the world of oral provization. Many graduates of the Faculty of Foreign Languages owe their development in the profession to Natalya Leonidovna. “To live is to be born slowly,” wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. For Natalya Leonidovna, these words of the French writer and test pilot are like a command to herself, a kind of symbol of faith. Throughout her life, despite the tragedy that is inevitable in the life of every person (her mother lost her only son when she was very young), a stream of sunlight passes through, the strength of her life energy was transmitted physically and tangibly. Communication with her is like a kind of therapy for the soul - this is what her undergraduates admit. Vice-Rector for Internationalization and Digitalization of the University Zhaylagul Oralovna Sagandykova recalls: “We were very close to this extraordinary woman who played an exceptional role in my destiny. My heart is filled with gratitude to the memory of the Teacher: she gave me everything I live and do now!” I was lucky enough to write my coursework, diploma and master's thesis under the supervision of Natalya Leonidovna. My time with her, my spiritual mentor, taught me a lot. This is a man of his word, for whom a promise is a duty. A man of conscience. She had qualities without which one would not succeed in the profession: rare intuition, which made it possible to accurately determine honesty and decency in a person. Moreover, she was direct and irreconcilable in both large and small things. Despite a sufficient degree of trust and close communication in the everyday sense (and we were students in her house), she never allowed us a single indulgence or leniency during the exams. She compiled tests herself, gave us a list of recommended literature, repeating: “Read, get inspired, teach, enjoy the fullness of life, renew your form, dare, because the time of youth is not given for chatter and self-indulgence!” Natalya Leonidovna, strict and demanding as a teacher, was surprisingly warm on a purely human level, truly kind to us young people, extremely delicate and tactful when it came to something personal and intimate. Having strong friends in different parts of the world, she did not break contact with them until the end of her life. She was truly loved. During her life, she knew real glory, true recognition abroad, but physically weakening, having survived heart surgery, she instinctively felt the proximity of the finitude of existence and still strived to help people. There is no need to cry over the ground and be moved, you need to lift it with hard work. We need people of action. “Love is a matter,” is the main lesson of our Teacher that we have learned. She taught us to work in a team, to bring us so different and dissimilar together, and the effectiveness and efficiency of the knowledge that she passed on to us always remained high. Time is the harshest judge! Only a decade after her departure, you understand: in the romantic, sometimes prone to mysticism, believing in the magic of numbers, Natalya Leonidovna had a thirst for bright goodness, a dream of love, an unquenchable longing for everything that was and was beautiful in her life. She, successful, recognized far beyond the borders of her native university, living and working in the provinces, had no self-delusion at all, worked to the point of self-forgetfulness, intensely, in order not to lag behind the given rhythm of modern science, to keep her tone. Her home library contains many dictionaries and reference books, but believing that a library should not be owned, but used, Natalya Leonidovna generously shared new items with us, lending them to us to read. As a specialist in the field of English lexicography, she devoted her main scientific works and linguistic research to the problems of creating explanatory educational dictionaries. She published short English-Russian and Russian-English dictionaries of lexicographic terms, a grammar reference book for schoolchildren and applicants, and a textbook on English vocabulary “English homonyms and 1000 English words similar to Russian.” It is well known that the Faculty of Foreign Languages became the leading faculty of the Kokchetav Pedagogical Institute in the 60-70s: the best personnel, graduates of foreign language institutes of the USSR, were sent here. And the English language department itself has been created since the establishment of the university. Of course, reorganizations of departments and the faculty itself inevitably took place, but the authority of the Inyazovites was really high. The Department of English in 1965 was headed by G. Bogin, then a young candidate of pedagogical sciences, who at the same time headed the faculty. By the way, he became a doctor, professor and outstanding scientist of the country. Bogin knew six languages, prepared a worthy replacement, and founded an original method of teaching English in the conditions of the Cold War, and therefore, the total lack of contacts with the English-speaking world. Daily immersion in the language environment through intensive reading of authentic materials and the development of writing skills greatly developed oral speech, speaking in the form of a monologue and dialogue, and the lexical and grammatical system of the English language was firmly assimilated. Bogin published articles about the Kokchetav Pedagogical Institute in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. At that time, this was an event that influenced the future fate of the recognized faculty: 1968 was the year of the all-Union recruitment to the department of the provincial university, which had become advanced within the Union. Here open lectures and workshops were held, followed by careful analysis and detailed discussion at meetings of one of the best departments in the Kazakh SSR, interesting reports were read on new methods of language teaching, special courses and teaching aids were developed. It was such a creative and truly scientific atmosphere that nurtured then-student Natalya Eremia. Talented mentors, specialists of encyclopedic erudition, excellent specialists Natalya Nemchenko, Lyubov Krasnikova, Roza Mashikova, Liliya Nasretdinova worked side by side with Natalya Leonidovna. Her followers, students and undergraduates who are now successfully working at the university: Yulia Astafieva, Dinara Ryspaeva, Ainagul Ismagulova, Adiya Akhetova and many others prefer an individual style of working with gifted students and actively help those who are weak in their studies. Let us note Natalya Leonidovna’s dedication to the faculty. Indeed, despite her professional growth and tremendous scientific achievements and successes, she did not part with the faculty that had become her home, did not leave the team in pursuit of illusory happiness, having found her destiny here, without betraying her vocation. By the end of the 90s, due to the outflow of personnel and brain drain (professional teachers left for their historical homeland in Germany with their families, they left crying, generously serving dastarkhan for neighbors and friends), only two candidates of science remained at the faculty in the English department, and one of them was Natalya Leonidovna Eremia. They are leaving this country for a better destiny. But I know there is no better fate. There is only one fate. And she follows you, no matter where she sails, Still, like a boat, she sails... And the fate of Natalya Eremia became the quiet, sweet and cozy city of Kokshetau, surrounded by green hills and rounded hills, covered with coniferous forests, painfully dear to the Faculty of Foreign Languages, which she completed and where she returned to teach English lexicography. She gave more to this life than she took. As one of its most talented graduates, Dinara Sarsembayevna Ryspaeva, admits: “Our selfless Natalya Leonidovna bequeathed her entire library, books and works collected over the years, to her native department of English language and teaching methods. Fortunately, today all these books are openly available to students, master’s and doctoral students in the auditorium named after her.” Over the years, the love of her grateful graduate students for their Teacher does not weaken, but only intensifies. Yulia Astafieva is still tenderly and reverently grateful to her beloved leader: “I consider myself incredibly lucky to be Natalya Leonidovna’s student. We, her graduates, remember with warmth in our hearts our practical classes on interpreting a literary text: what was hidden from our student gaze was so subtly conveyed and revealed to us by the sensitive Natalya Leonidovna. What about classes on the history of language and translation of literary texts? How can we forget our work together? Natalya Leonidovna is the person who discovered English lexicography for me. It was under her strict guidance that I wrote both my diploma work and my master's thesis in the field of English lexicography. Natalya Leonidovna is fair and demanding, and this is how we will remember her! She knew how to instill courage of mind in her students, instill interest in serious intellectual work, instill in them the joy of co-creation, creating ideal conditions in her classes so that our judgments formed the kingdom of thought, and we ourselves felt like rulers in it.” They say that when a person is weak, he looks at the stars. When he is strong, the stars look at him. We believe that somewhere far away, in the heights of heaven beyond our control, the star of Jeremiah quietly shines, sending from there a distant, unquenchable light to those who were dear to her on earth
