To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I’m creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take. This is part one!Today I’m talking with Alfonso González Bartolessis about learning via courses.When you listen to our conversation you’ll find out:🎧 How Alfonso became interested in languages🎧 The many forms that courses can take – we have to figure out what works best for us🎧 Why Alfonso decided to create the TranslaStars platform, who can benefit from the platform, and some of the courses that are available there🎧How it’s possible to personalise the learning experience on TranslaStars – learning at your own pace, making connections with others, content in different languages.🎧Why investing time in continuous learning and personal development is importat for everyone, but especially for freelancers🎧 Why we should never stop learning!Thanks Alfonso for this inspiring conversation and for sharing more about your platform. I'm suremost of the translators in my network are already familiar with TranslaStars, but if not, go and check it out!Further information and all the social meedia links are on the show notes page: https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode270

Our brain, emotions, and language learning with Alice Mansaud This week I have a returning guest on the podcast. Last time, Alice was part-way through some training, so she agreed to come back when she'd finished to share what she'd learned.We talked about🎤 Alice’s Neurolanguage coach certification and how what she learned during the training helps her now in her role as a teacher🎤 The journey to become ourselves in our additional languages – accepting that it is a journey and figuring out what works for you🎤 The role of emotions in the learning process🎤 Naming the negative emotions so we can find the best way to process them and build strategies for similar situations in the future.🎤 Finding some smaller milestones between where you are now and where you want to be in the future🎤 How preparing is not a waste of time – you can’t prepare for everything, but you can take some steps to make your life easier if you know you’ll have to do a new or more challenging thing in the future.We talked about all kinds of challenges when you’re using language in a practical sense, from fear of not understanding others to looking for a new apartment. Did any of our suggestions resonate with you? Are you planning to try out any of our suggestions?Find out more on the show notes page:https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode269/

Last week I attended one of Marta Pagans’ workshops for freelancers. It was nothing to do with languauge learning, but I was interested in the event anyway and I was also glad to participate in some training where I used one of my other languages.I’m not going to talk about what I learned at the workshop – though you’ll be seeing some of the results of the actions that I decided to take as the year goes on.I do, however, want to share some of my reflections about using German, my first additional language, in a business training context.This is what I learned!Do you relate to any of these things?Visit the show notes page, find out more about my events, and get the link for Marta's page  here:https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode268/

Megan Miller is back on the podcast with me!   We recorded at the end of last week, so it’s still January and I wanted to offer something a bit different from the usual content that we hear at the beginning of a new year. We talked about: • How being too prescriptive about habits can steal our joy – language is important • How saying “no” and being intentional about what we really want can create space to start new things or give us more time for things that are really important to us • The importance of self-care and self-compassion as we think about how we want to allocate our time and energy resources. Figure out what works for you! • The importance of boundaries – with ourselves and others. • How life works in seasons. What kind of season are you in right now? Check out the show notes page here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/episode267/Or go back to episode 240 to listen to our first conversation.How has 2025 been for you so far?

For anyone who's listening in January 2025 - wishing you a year with interesting encounters, opportunities that help you to grow, and people who will support you along the way! If you have discovered the episode at a later date - have a wonderful day!You won't get one of the typical new year episodes from me about what you should be thinking/starting or doing differently. There's enough of that around and a lot of it lacks self-compassion. I think any time can be a good time to make a positive change. However, sometimes for us in the northern hemesphere, the middle of winter is not the best time to start pushing ourselves to do something radically different. Sometimes a gentler start to the new year is better. But I have been making changes here at English with Kirsty. Last year I posted about them on LinkedIn. I rewrote parts of my website and reorganised the pages. I changed how I approach my content creation so that I now concentrate on 7 main topics ... and I didn't talk about those here on the podcast.So this is a quick episode to tell you where my focus will be this year so that you'll know what's coming up on the podcast.There may also be other things that I don't know about yet, but this is a fair snapshot of what I'm doing right now.In July 2025, the English with Kirsty podcast will be 10. I want to run some kind of online event to celebrate that, so let me know using the contact form on the show notes page or via LinkedIn if you have any ideas! https://englishwithkirsty.com/episode266/or you ca email me - kirsty@englishwithkirsty.com

My "31 ways to improve your English" challenge is back again and we'll be starting on 1st January 2025!I don't believe that the beginning of a new year is the best time to start new things or bring about change! But it is true that our routines change throughout December and sometimes it's hard to get back into the habit of practising our additional language skills outside of the things that we need to do for work.Also, sometimes people want to learn new things, but they feel bored with what they're doing at the moment and want to change things up a bit.This is where my 31 ways to improve your English challenge comes in.Each day, you receive a new activity to develop some aspect of your language. If you're doing it to improve your English, you also have access to me to ask questions or get written feedback about any of your tasks.Find the show notes page here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode265/or sign up for the challenge here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/about-the-lessons/31days/The challenge costs £22 and we begin on 1st January 2025. If you come across this episode after that time, check my events page for current events:https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/events

I met Dolores a few months ago at a networking event and since then I’ve been getting to know her better at my networking and language exchange events for language professionals.Dolores is also a podcaster – in fact that was one of our first topics. I thought it would be interesting to talk about Dolores work, her podcast, and why she decided to split it into two separate podcasts with content in both Spanish and English.We talked about: Dolores podcast and why she decided to have a podcast in English and one in Spanish How having a podcast helps Dolores to learn more and develop her speaking skills Why Dolores enjoys translating in the area of education Why we will never stop being language learners, however fluent we become How the role of people working in translation and localisation is changing Dolores’ advice for anyone who is thinking about starting a podcast. You can find all the links and further details on the show notes page:https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode264/

In this week's episode I'm talking about my new interactive workshop, which is all about the challenges that we can face as advanced language learners. We've got our language to a good level, but then, for whatever reason, we feel stuck and it's hard to move forward.We'll explore 5 challenges that you might be facing and what you can do to move past them.Talking about problems isn't fun, so I wanted to make it a bit more approachable and light-hearted. I also didn't want to make case studies with these 5 challenges in case anyone had the same name as the characters. So instead, we have 5 dogs. You can see the retriever in the picture here - she struggles with perfectionism. Does anyone relate to that? If you do, come along to the workshop!We also have 4 other dogs with different situations, so if you come, you'll discover whether you're more like the spaniel, the labrador, the German shepherd or the collie!Or maybe you'll have elements of more than one. As a language learner, I do!This is where you can find out more about the workshop on 28th November 2024 and book your place:https://englishwithkirsty.com/dogs-and-language-learners-tips-for-advanced-learners-to-get-unstuck/ And this is where you can listen to the episode on my site:https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode263/

If you use access technology or have other accessibility requirements, you can’t just find a good language course and sign up for it! First you need to check out how accessible that course will be for you, how willing the course provider is to make any adaptions, and then you can make an informed decision about whether it’s going to be a good option to meet your needs.I’m a learner as well as a teacher and I have a lot to say about this too, but I thought it would be more interesting to have a discussion with one of my clients who also uses access technology.I’ve known Elisabeth for a number of years now. In fact, she was my second customer! We talked about: Elisabeth’s previous experiences of learning English Why Elisabeth wanted to find an online English course and what was important to her in terms of accessibility Why it’s important for designers of courses or learning materials to be aware of different accessibility requirements and to consider them from the beginning of the project What Elisabeth does to develop and improve her English outside of our classes. Find out more on the show notes page:https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode262/

Today I'm talking about some of the activities in which I've been participating in order to develop my language skills in a way that's relevant to work. Whether that was attending a Women in Localisation webinar in Portuguese, meeting a Toastmaster's group in Portugal, or planning future attendance at a workshop in German - all of these things are somehow work-related and at the same time, they help me to develop relevant, work-related vocabulary. I should add that I didn't need to look for these opportunities. all of the invitations came to me through my network. If you spend time getting to know people and building relationships, those people will probably invite you to things!I also talk about some other things you can do such as looking for industry-specific podcasts, publications, or social media accounts.Whether you're developing your passive listening skills at a webinar, participating in a workshop, or even going on a podcast in an additional language - all of these things can help you to grow and become a more confident user of your additional language/s.Here is the show notes page. https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode261/You can send me a message with any feedback at kirsty@englishwithkirsty.com or come and find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsty-wolf-a8478235/