About my language learning phobia The trouble started when I was a little girl. As a pupil from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, the first foreign language I had to learn at school was French. By this time my mother and my sister were both already nearly fluent in French. I’ve always been more of a science-type person, so language-learning was quite a hard job for me. However, I tried hard. At last in the beginning of the French course... Practicing my first French words at home I made numerous mistakes. My mother and my sister laughed at me whenever I spoke. I was ashamed and eventually I refused to speak. When it came to English learning a few years later I was fearful and demotivated. During my education I bumbled through the language exams. I earned two master’s degrees so I had to attend countless lectures. Many of them were given in English. As you may imagine, it wasn’t fun to me. Likewise it wasn’t much fun to me to travel or to work in international relations. So I decided to set an appropriate New Year's resolution for 2016. My intention is to battle my fears and to improve my English (speaking) skills. In order to that, the first thing I did in 2016, was booking a language trip. I will go to Australia for seven weeks in September. Because I always need a very concrete goal, I also started a Cambridge First exam preparation course at our local adult education center. The test will be held in December. And then, a few days ago, I came across italki. I was instantly excited. What a great opportunity to work on my speaking issues one-to-one in peace! Still in the same week, I had my first lesson. My teacher, Chris, is very patient and I enjoy our lessons a lot. I’m confident that I will love it to communicate in English by the end of the year:-)