When I was a little girl (a loooooooot of time ago!) French was the language we used to speak and, don �t say it, I loved English. My first attempts to learn it were through  songs and U.S.A. Far West movies. Gary Cooper, Doris Day, Burt Lancaster were my heroes!

At the age of 20 I started to spend long periods in London. My longest one was a whole year after  my university degree. I used to be a baby sitter to pay my studies. When I became a teacher I continued with my visits to London and U.K. in general.

Well, this is my story in two words but actually it �s a 45 year long story!

Ciao

We decided after 3 years to move to France and as a teacher I speak English in class, I very rarely speak French in class, and at home we speak both languages. 

Voil�!

 At the tender young age of thirty seven I moved to the USA and spent five years living on Long Island and working in Manhattan, after that time I got home sick and returned to London, but with a dialect that was a mixture of London, New York and a touch of je ne sais quoi, just to cause confusion.

My first contact with Englis was in primary school (7 years old) where I had one English class 40 min a week ... When I finished my primary school I was given a scholarship in an English Institute, where I studied more intensively English (I had English lesson in my secondary school as well, but they weren�t as advanced as in the institute). When I graduated I decided to study in the English Teacher trainee university but I studied for 3 years and then I gave up... However, I can teach in lots of places and, as the internet has been spread and got around the world, I continue reading and learning more and more everyday. I�m not an expert, but I think I can speak it fluently and I can also teach it to the ones who want to learn. I love surfing the net reading in English and also watching movies in English... they are a great way of self-studying for myself.

:)

Paola

My native language is Russian but I speak Ukrainian very naturally.

My mom not-knowingly blessed me to study English and this is how it happened:

When I was 6, my parents and I were watching TV one night and there was a singer from America - Dean Reed- singing some song (I must say we didn �t get to watch American singers very often because at Soviet times all western culture was seen as "decaying capitalism" by the authorities), so I kept bugging my mom what language that man was speaking and what he sang, I just wanted to know that so badly. My mom said to me, "This man is singing in English, next year you will go to a specialized school and start learning English and some day you will be able to understand it." I did go to the specialized school where I studied English for 10 years, starting from grade 1, then I studied at the Foreign Languages Department at the University for 5 years and majored in English. The most valuable experience in language acquisition for me as a learner were the years when I worked as an interpreter with different native speakers: English, Canadians, Americans, Australians. And then of course my husband, who was then just a friend, influenced my proficiency in English, too. He has lived in the States for 6 months and also had an American as a roommate in Ukraine for about 9 months.

That �s my story:)

Sophia