The reason I started to study English

I was 16 when I decided to study English. At that time, I didn’t think about English as a profession, but it is obvious that English has become my profession.

I was born in the city of Bucharest, Romania. My family wasn’t wealthy, but they had a comfortable life. We didn’t have many possessions and we were happy with that. I spent my childhood playing with my friends on the street or climbing trees. Every day, I would go to school and come back home after classes to help my parents out at work.

In primary school, my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

English is the most widely spoken language in the world, and I would like to be able to speak it fluently. So, I decided to study English as a second language. The reason I started studying English is because my mother speaks English.

The reason I started to study English

My mother speaks English, but my father doesn’t. I got along better with the kids when we learned to speak English together. It didn’t take long before everyone in our family started speaking this language instead of Romanian!

I think that being bilingual is a great advantage as it allows you to communicate efficiently and easily with people from different countries, if they know your native language as well. My favorite subjects at school were History and Mathematics because my teacher could speak English.

My mother is from Romania, but both my parents come from a big family of six children where I’m the youngest child. My father moved to France when he married our mother and had four more kids with her so we have lots of cousins in Paris: we all spend most time together there – one year at Porte de Versailles near the Eiffel Tower! We also travel around Europe quite a lot.

We never owned a house, we rented apartments and then my parents decided to buy an apartment in Paris with their friends when they split up because they had different ideas about the future of our lives. They were each studying French at university so both got jobs there as language assistants for several years until it became easier for me to study English full-time on top of enjoying life outside France! I graduated from school (in 3 months), did some part-time jobs and now I’m getting ready to start a new chapter of my life. See also, English study.

Moving to an English speaking country

Migration is difficult and as English speakers we would probably never be fully accepted. However, I know many people who came to France from Romania in the past few years (I’m a year younger than them), got both French citizenship and Belgian nationality but most of them worked together with us to find new jobs since my family speaks such good French!

How did you learn English?

My parents speak very little Romanian – they only use it at home and they were raised in France. They would tell us kids stories about how difficult it was for them to learn the French language which I always took as a positive experience – learning another language is never easy but if you have friends from within that new country, there’s nowhere else to go! Even when I lived alone in Paris during college with nobody speaking Romanian at home or school I became fluent by listening to English TV and conversing with other friends and university students who had moved to France.

How did you get skills for living in an English speaking country?

I got my degree (a Bachelor’s degree) in the language arts with a minor humanities subjects program! Most of my teachers during high-school were foreign althletes who helped me learn a lot about grammar and literature which they used primarily as material while writing papers so when it came time to apply for graduate school next year I knew enough about English grammar, literature and research papers that my professors were impressed!

How do you feel living in another country with a different culture?

Living somewhere just isn’t as important as keeping good friendships. I’ve been working on finding many new French friends lately while making sure to keep up an active social life back home in my spare time despite moving to France! Working jobs within your area of expertise

Most people know me through the language course business. I have always been self-employed and own a few companies such as a language school (I run the master’s certificate program in Paris), an English speaking club for Chinese college students, and I also teach English at a TESOL institute. It’s more rewarding to come across students who need extra help with their hubby in the kitchen during meal preparation rather than working temporary jobs stocking shelves or doing computer programming work: quite frankly, it’s nearly impossible to find people willing (or able) to do these grunt-intensive jobs so why not exploit that fresh perspective and trained eye when you can!

Having to learn the language of a new country is one of the most rewarding experiences for an adventurer.

All in all, it’s been a great adventure so far and I am looking forward to continuing to explore more of the world!

Do you have any advice for people who want to learn a language?

Don’t be afraid to speak up and ask questions. Language is something that is constantly changing and it’s important to keep up with it. The more you know, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

I’ve been a part of many language projects at work that I didn’t realize was my own initiative until the team came together. That’s what happened when I started working on Travelgram! A lot of people were nice enough to share their experiences with me, here are just a few examples:

What is your biggest challenge while living abroad?

Luckily, it’s about trying to adjust with the language, not overcoming a physical challenge.

I really enjoy learning foreign languages and using them regularly in everyday life: on this trip I have been making sure that I learn French through conversation as often as possible. One can never truly be fluent without speaking each of these languages! Through my travelgram giving back to less able students abroad, one thing that came up naturally was how much people appreciate hearing the language that we speak at home.