A propos de moi
When I was 8 or 9 years old I would visit my auntie and uncle and cousins living in the countryside.
I remember being fascinated by this big encyclopedia of my cousins. When we had some free time I’d spend ages flipping through the pages, with one page in particular catching my attention.
It was a page on languages and alphabets.
I saw what I think was the Hindi alphabet all writtn out and was amazed by this idea that all these funny looking squiggles could actually mean something. I copied it all down onto a piece of paper, not really knowing what to do with it, but suspecting that I would be able to create something that means something without anybody else being able to understand, almost like a secret code.
My auntie saw what I was doing and instead of asking why, she encouraged it, and pretty quickly she started teaching me some of the French she knew.
Something clicked in my head and I was fascinated that these funny sounding words with funny sounding spellings could be mixed and matched and put together to mean something, and that that could be used to communicate with others.
From then I was hooked. I got my parents to get me a First French book, I borrowed French books from the library and pieced things together bit by bit. When I first started studying French in school I loved it and tried to take it all in. I became obsessed.
This fascination continued to high school where I studied French for eight years (and was possibly the only one in my class to enjoy the year of Latin and Ancient Greek we had to do as well).
But there was a problem
Often the classroom approach swung between two extremes.
At first it was too easy. I already knew much of what we were doing in class so it wasn’t a challenge. Then at one point it became absurdly difficult. At 17 years old we were reading François Mauriac – dense, literary French that’s challenging even for me today. It seemed like there was no middle ground.
After 8 years I knew all my tenses and grammatical structures, but put me in front of a real French person for a normal conversation and I’d struggle.
I had knowledge about French, which was useful, but I didn’t have the ability to use French comfortably.
Then at 19 I went to Peru.
I spent five months living and working in the Peruvian Amazon on a rainforest conservation project. I arrived in January with almost no Spanish. I left in June speaking it comfortably; better than I’d ever spoken French after eight years of study.
Five months to overtake eight years.
That’s when everything changed. It wasn’t my ability, it was the methods used. In Peru I learned Spanish because I had to communicate. I needed to work with my colleagues, order food, make friends, solve problems. Every conversation mattered. Every mistake was just part of figuring it out. There were no textbooks, no grammar drills - just real people trying to understand each other.
The contrast was clear.
Eight years of French to reach a level where I can’t even communicate.
Five months of immersive Spanish – fluent and natural.
Fast forward to 2015
I was stuck in a rut at my job working in sales for an engineering company. Then a new French colleague walked through the door. We fell in love, I moved to France and she encouraged me to make the jump to a job doing something I genuinely loved.
I trained as a teacher, developed my work as a translator and since 2019 I’ve been helping career professionals achieve their English language goals.
My approach is built on my experiences living and working around the world: language learning works when it’s practical, engaging and connected to real communication.
That’s what I can help you do. No rote memorization, just a little bit of grammar at the right moment, and practical communication on life, work, and things you enjoy doing.