How languages have changed my life Hello everyone. I am a Professional Teacher on Italki as well as being a Languages Teacher in a State School in Cambridge, England. I am very passionate about languages; I speak French, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese and I am learning Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Russian in my free time. Languages have changed my life and only for the better. It all started when I was four years old. We were in the car on a family trip to France and my father started pointing at objects out of the car window, saying them in French and getting me to repeat them. At that moment, a light bulb switched on in my brain. I learnt the word 'voiture' that day and from that moment onwards my enthusiasm for languages grew and grew. I started learning languages at high school in Essex when I was eleven years old. Being from Essex, where it is a rare occurrence to hear foreign languages being spoken in the street, any new languages immediately sounded exotic to me and French and German immediately became my favourite subjects. They remained my favourite subjects all the way through school. I studied French and Spanish at University and as part of my course I studied for one year in Zaragoza in Spain. My linguistic experiences have changed my life. They have given me a real desire and curiosity to travel the world and communicate with people from lots of different cultural backgrounds. I have also had the opportunity to use my languages in a business context, undertake translation work, act as an interpreter in business situations and share my knowledge with learners of all ages and abilities in a classroom. Since being at University I have worked in the UK, Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia. I have also been on holiday to Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Russia, China and Morocco. Without the confidence that I gained learning languages, this would not have all been possible. Languages have made a real difference to my life. If I were to lose the languages I have learnt to date I would feel lost. Start learning a new language today and you will see how it will change your life for the better.