Episode 21:

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Christina:

So I am Christina. I am the person behind LovetoLingo. And yeah, the idea of Love To Lingo is really to empower language learners and language teachers to sort of maximize their learning potential so that language learners reach their full potential as learners and teachers sort of help guide that idea, that potential.

 

Michelle:

Yeah. Yeah. I love that we see your face, by the way, because I know I love your logo and it's so cute. It's so pretty actually. It's so nice. 

 

Christina:

My sister-in-law designed it. 

 

Michelle:

Really? Okay. Yeah, it's very my style actually. However, I'm also like, wait, who is this? And so when we first connected, I can't remember exactly what it was about, obviously something language related. But what I love is that what I see you doing and you're showing up every single day, is you do have a lot of different personal experiences that are related to how you decided to go into creating your company and your brand. But I also feel like there's a big part of this that is given your professional experiences, given it's 20 years that you've spent inside of the industry, do you want to just walk us through how that all came about and Yeah, obviously manifested.

 

Christina:

Sure. Yeah. So I ended up actually studying French at university in the United States. I hated university. I had a really hard time. It was a hard time personally for me, and I wanted to get out as soon as possible. So I went to my advisor and I said, how can I get a degree as soon as possible so you have the most credits in French? Essentially? I said, well, guess what? We're going to study. We're going to study French. So I studied French at university, that was my major and I minored in international relations. And then I moved to France right after university. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I moved to France and worked on a ski resort and things and kind of got to experience the French life and decided I wanted to stay in Europe basically. And one way to do that, again, this is about 20 years ago, 25 years ago, was to become an English teacher.

There was a huge demand for that. And so I decided to go to Spain actually to do this qualification, a TEFL certification because they were more expensive in France and didn't, the market wasn't as developed in France and it still isn't much more developed in Spain. And so I came here and came to Spain and said, why am I living in France? This is so much better. It aligned a little bit more with my personality and the things that I was interested in. Again, I was 21, 22, and Spain is kind of known for the parties and stuff. So that was really fun for me at that time. So I came here and did my temple certification here. I actually moved back to France because I had a job or I had a contract at the time and lived there, forget, and then moved back here. So then I've been here and working in the English teaching industry for this time and and did the degrees, more advanced degrees and stuff in English teaching and just really got into it. It wasn't something that I planned to do. I think a lot of us fell into language teaching as sort of a backup plan. My plan was to get this certificate and then travel the world,go to Thailand, and then go to Costa Rica and do all of this. And I just got stuck in the first place that I ended up,

 

Michelle:

But stuck in a good way because I feel like you've made your life there, and it's something that I think a lot of people take for granted, especially now we see so many people who are trying, we're both from the US so basically a lot of people trying to leave the US and trying to say like, all right, well, I'll just pack up my whole family and next month I'll go live in Spain. And it's like, wait, actually, it doesn't happen. So automatically you traveling for a two week vacation is very different than you actually deciding to move there. Can you talk us through how that process was integrating into a new country? I know you just said that you loved it. I also completely see why my own personal experiences match, but I do think there must've been challenges that you encountered.

 

Christina:

Yeah, I mean, I think definitely in France, definitely when I was in France I felt like there was a lot more to learn. I was very young as well. So I think it's very different to have those experiences as a 20-year-old rather than once you have your personality and your cultural things developed a little bit more. And France, I felt a lot more friction. I guess it was a little bit more challenging, but Spain was very, very welcoming. The problems I had when I first moved here were really language related. It was very frustrating because I couldn't sort of communicate with people, and this is coming from being able to speak French at the time. So I learned another language and it's like, oh my God, I've done all this work and I just studied the wrong language basically. Of course, learning French made it so much easier to learn Spanish.

It took me, what, 10 years or something to kind of get to a level of French that I was able to get to in about six months in Spanish. And it wasn't because I'm intelligent or anything, it was just because I already had that base there and it was much easier to do that. So that was really a problem. Obviously there are cultural differences. There are cultural differences that drive me crazy to this day and will always drive me crazy. And then at the same time when I go to the US, there are so many things that drive me crazy there. And so I am just angry at everything all the time. It's so much better in this other place, wherever you are. And so I think, yeah, so there are some challenges there, but for the most part culturally I find the cultures are quite compatible in a lot of ways. And so it's not a huge difference.

 

Michelle:

I guess the thing that I notice being the most different between my experiences in Spain and versus those in France is that socially it seems just a little easier to make friends, come in contact with people, stay connected. And I don't know if it has to do with being young or not because I actually do think it's just kind of part of the culture also. And I know a fair amount of Spanish people also and friends who are the ones who are easier to access, easier to get along with, easier to connect with. And it's also because they don't discriminate based on how old you are, where you came from, what you did, what you studied, who you know. You know what I mean? It is just easier because it's like, oh, hey, you're human. All right, let's go out. And it's very light. And there's something cultural, obviously knowing a bit more about French culture, there's reasons for that. You said that you went to France initially for, was it a teaching position for

 

Christina:

No, it was literally because I was lost in my light and just, no, and I had a friend that was at, it's very crazy to think about it now. I was planning actually on going to Brazil. I mean, this is crazy. It's like crazy to think about it now. So out of character for me now, I was planning on going to Brazil and I actually had a visa to work in, so I was planning to go to Brazil for a while and then go to London and work in London. I had a work visa for, it was like six months or something to work in London, and I don't exactly remember how it happened, but I was in London and I had a friend that was in France working as an au pair. So, oh, well, I'll come down and visit you. And then I was there, I was like, why am I going to Brazil? I should just stay here. And that sort of is how that developed at that first time. I'd already been to France to study abroad and stuff, but I was there. So they are kind of different. I mean, one of my first memories of being here coming, I came straight from France and I was walking on the street and I thought, oh God, I must have something on my face. I have something on my head. People are looking at me.

And it was because of course in France you don't sort of make eye contact with people and you don't look at people's faces quite rude. And I had kind of, without realizing that, sort of learned that. And then when I was here, it was like, why are people talking to me? Why are they looking at me? And felt very almost like I was being aggressed against kind of. And I was like, well, no, it's just that I have adopted this other kind of way of being, because that's the way to be. And seeing that cultural difference was huge at that time.

 

Michelle:

Yeah. Can we talk a little bit actually about, because you had such a strong and deep relationship with the French language before starting Spanish, is that correct? Right. So can you tell us in your head how that worked out? I do think a lot of people take for granted the fact that there are romance languages. Okay. So oh, not surprising, you know what I mean? Oh, you studied French, you oh, studied Spanish. But I will say that a lot of people, I know both native French speakers and native Spanish speakers struggle with the other person's, other side's language because it tends to be too similar at times and too different for other reasons. And it's like, I think also the additional challenge of it, if it's your first true foreign language and you're like, why is it my language? But changed? So how did it play out in your head?

 

Christina:

So for me, French was the language that I learned. My mom actually was a Spanish teacher, so she was a Spanish teacher at my high school. So that's why I did French, because I couldn't have bared her to be my teacher. I couldn't have handled that. My mom and I as a teenager had a bad hard time. And so having her correct me would've made my head explode. So I did French instead. And that's kind of what happened. And so I learned French and it was really interesting because I was relatively okay at school. I could kind of go to classes and pick stuff up. And I had a really hard time actually in French class because it was a kid, because I had to memorize stuff. And we at that time, and I don't know what the education system is in the US now, but at that time in my school, in my little context, there was a lot of deemphasizing of rote learning of things and which is great, which is fantastic in a lot of ways, but actually wrote learning to some degree in languages is very helpful.

And my mom actually, I was struggling and she's like, oh no, you've just got to do these flashcards or you've got to quiz yourself. And she actually helped me with that because I didn't learned that technique. And so she did help me in that sense. But anyway, so I did French and when I came to Spain helped a lot. It was great. It helped a lot because I could just invent stuff, so I could say, I dunno. I remember having a conversation with someone and being like, oh, it's a mething. It's the same word, so you get a feel for it. So I didn't find them too similar actually. I mean, there's some things that are different, but I didn't find that problem. I find that with Portuguese, I tried to learn it's impossible, so similar that my brain can't focus on it. Am I studying the same thing? I already know? I do see that between French people learning Spanish and Spanish people learning French, there is a lot more friction there. It's a lot that know a lot of Spanish people that have a hard time with French, partly because I think of how it's taught at school and pronunciation issues,that it is just different from an English speaker. Learning to pronounce French is different than a Spanish native speaker and any other way as well, right? It's just different. So yeah, I didn't find that. I found it very helpful.

 

Michelle:

If anything, I feel like the fact that you're, and anyone who's not a native romance language speaker, it actually helps once you, because it's almost like you're a little more detached from it. And so you're like, all right, I already figured this out or figured it out. It doesn't matter what it is, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, let's just look at all of them. So when I go this route, I have to do this thing. When I go that route, I do that thing. And I had taken Spanish before French, I had never, oh, God never wanted to do French ever. I was like, this is crazy. No one uses French in the us. I'll never need it. Oh god. So yeah, basically surprise. Yeah, I really feel that because there is this sense of detachment. It's something that when I talk with, let's say other friends from Spain and they're trying to get into French, and they're like, wait, how is your brain just attaching it and willingly giving into this new structure? And I'm like, I think it's because I didn't already have years of your structure, which is essentially too close.

 

Christina:

And for you, and something like, okay, learning the subjunctive, once you understand the concept of it,then you just apply it, then it's not a problem. Whereas if my husband, and I don't know if yours, but my husband has no idea about the concept of subjunctive. He cannot, he's like, because the future, but kind of like it's not going to happen. And he has no idea about that concept as a concept. And so he would apply that rule in a completely different way because he doesn't have to learn that as a concept where something like,

 

Michelle:

Exactly,

 

Christina:

Yeah. So it's the same thing as modal verbs or something, or people learning English or phrasal verbs for people learning English that native English speakers don't even recognize that as a thing. They would not even know what that is because they haven't studied it from the outside.

 

Michelle:

And I think if I can speak for Yann, I think he could, he's going to be like, no, it's not like this. He's going to listen to this. But I think that he understands, let's say witch tense because in school they're all taught this is a subjunctive, so you have to know. And so he can make it. And if you ask him which verb form matches who thing, yeah, he can do it. If you ask him to explain what subjunctive means, that's where it all breaks down. It's like, oh. But yeah, and it's exactly like what your husband probably says. Yeah, it's kind of like this, but also it's not really like that. And it's like, oh God. So definitely, I think it's also the reason why you and I know this, but I think it's worth mentioning that native speakers, while very, very, very, very helpful for all of the sort of natural ways communication and language happen, may not be the ones who can give you the exact explanation what you learn in your certification program. That's when you do a degree, that's what essentially you learn from the outside perspective in a way, what your language is about so that you can better explain it to others. Sure.

 

Christina:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's all about qualification, not about

 

Michelle:

Training. Yeah. So in Spain, are there things that you have seen access to language classes or just the way that a language is if a language like English, how that's seen in society? Maybe you can go into that.

 

Christina:

Yeah, I think it's really important. So I had a social media post on threads actually go viral a while ago. And it was about a client of mine who studied her English is fantastic, her English, she probably easily C one if not a C two, you would speak to her, wouldn't realize for after a while you'd realize that she wasn't a native English speaker, but you would assume she was Dutch or Scandinavian or something that has a really, really high level of English. And we met because we were working on preparing a job interview, and she ended up getting this job at a very, very important American company, but based here and based in Madrid. And she started her job, was very excited, very, very nervous. It was her dream job. And she's doing the onboarding session with her human resources person. And oh, so I can find this information in the platform the human sistance person says, yeah, so it's on the platform. My client just goes into this spiral because she had used in the platform rather than on the platform, this spiraled her imposter syndrome and all of these things thing because she's like, oh my god, I can't speak English. This person thinks I'm an idiot, I can't do this. And so she kind of shut down completely and didn't participate in meetings and things, actually had her boss talk to her and be like, what's going on? You were so great in this interview, what's happening? And she comes to me, she's like, I need to learn all the proposition, I need to learn all of this stuff.

And eventually she got out of it. She reframed the whole problem because the problem wasn't the proposition, of course, course, it was the fact that she had sort of these limiting beliefs that she had, and she just assumed that everybody thought she was an idiot because she mistake a letter. It's not even. So this post kind of goes viral, and I think we can all kind of see that it's relatable in a certain way that your imposter syndrome can get so out of hand basically that you really stifles your progress. And a lot of Americans actually responded to this, I wouldn't even notice. And I mean that was my reaction. I wouldn't have even noticed that. But I think what is really important and what was missing from that conversation that because it's social media and everything gets collapsed, and what's missing from that, she wasn't interacting with native English speakers in any way. She was working with other non-native English speakers as in a global society and global using English as a global language. And your English level in that situation very often is seen as a proxy for your status and education level.

And part of that here in Spain, very, very much, and I've been part of this my entire career, families that have disposable income will send their children to English classes after school, expensive English classes after school, they'll send them to Ireland in the summer, they'll send them to private schools where English education is, they're getting education in English. So English is the status symbol. So it has nothing to do with her identity as an English speaker. That imposter syndrome is not necessarily just that. It's not her identity as an English speaker, it's her identity as her status as a professional. And she's very, very concerned about how she is seen in that way. They're going to think that I am not, her belief was they're going to think that I'm not well educated enough to hold this position because I've made this one mistake in English.And I think that's something that is missing from that post basically is this broader context that this person finds themselves in. And in Spain, that's very, very much the case. I think English, English proficiency is seen in this broader socioeconomic context that is not fitting in it's very different context from someone moving to England or someone moving or immigrating to the United States.

And I think that's one of the problems that I see a lot with social media especially, is that these contexts kind of get collapsed and people have different goals and then you start arguing about these things and it's like, no, no, but hold on, the actual goal is different here. The goal for my client is to sort of operate in English in a global context, has nothing to do with talking to native speakers at all, which is completely different from someone who is going to immigrate to the United States or to Ireland or whatever. It's a completely different, you have different goals there, and so how you're going to approach that is different. And so then people argue about things online about what this means and what that means. Well, actually we're playing different games, so stop criticizing whatever this person has chosen to do. They just have a different goal from you. And that's something that I think is maybe not as clear from the outside.

 

Michelle:

Yeah, I think it's really clear for the people who have to come in contact with people like you and I every single day and every single week and in all handful of other people online who also are exposed to this. But I would completely agree that it's something that people, I think people don't even see that they default to a certain context, like a base context. So for instance, oh, English, of course, it's to survive the catastrophe that is American society or just so difficult because I don't know accents. And it's like, no, that's not even in play here. It's not even, like you said, it's not even the same game. It's not the same rules. I realized in talking with many of my friends who still, I don't think they understand what my company is about or what it is I do because they think in their heads it's like, oh yeah, you just teach English. And I'm like, you really don't see at all.

I can't even begin to explain how many factors you can't see because you've never lived outside of your country. You've never had to learn a new language, you've never had to adapt into something that is unprecedented for the entire world because many of these people, if you're connecting remotely, you are able to access how many other types of people, groups of people, nationalities, cultures, ethnicities, whatever, languages. And I love that you said English as a proxy, exactly what it is. Exactly. You can only use this. And so everyone's just kind of trading with this, right? I mean, I hate to say it's currency, but it's kind of communication currency. And so the way that you go about it is also tied into what you've already lived, what your society showed you from probably an early age. And what's really interesting is when you see that none of that lines up because of course the way it works in Spanish society is different from another country and there's generational stuff as well. So this is a great, I'm so going to clip this and put it a four hour promo because I remember that post and I remember us talking a little bit about it as well. It's difficult on social media to get all this out there, and that's why podcasts, that's why other supporting information, and it's okay, social media we understand is superficial,

 

Christina:

Right? I think it's necessarily by default, of course, the whole thing is it just collapses. It collapses everything. And it was very interesting. So some responses was like, oh, well I learned whatever. I learned German and I just went and just ignored making mistakes and just did this. I was like, well, that's great for you. I'm really happy for you. That's just not, you're kind of missing, I don't say this because it just ends up being too much of an extra work or something. I'm not quite sure how to do that, but it's like you're sort of missing the point. It's not mirrored directly.

And I think that with English especially, it's not necessarily mirrored directly because English is the global language at the moment. So yeah, it, it shows a lot. And most of the people I work with, again, I would say, I want to ask you about this actually. I feel like it might be a little bit different from your context as well. Most of the people that I work with, I'm the only native English speaker that they ever really come into contact with. They are at least maybe 25% of their interactions are with native English speakers. The rest of them are people that are using English as a global language. And so their needs are completely different. The game they're playing is completely different from someone from me living in Spain, completely different from my experience learning Spanish to live in Spain. It's completely different game they're playing. And so it doesn't mirror itself. Exactly. Is that the same for you, do you?

 

Michelle:

For my work, it really depends on the person because people have, and what's interesting is when you stay long enough with a client and you see the evolution of their career path and you're like, oh, so you changed teams? Oh, interesting. And everything is different now. It's all reshuffled and your new manager is Australian and it's native speaker, but it's not the same type of native speaker. So for me personally, I would say I am not necessarily the only native speaker. There are people who work for companies that are based in the US, but they have divisions outside. But I am probably the one who is going to be the most honest, meaning I'm going to be the one who is telling them or asking them to clarify when they aren't necessarily finishing a thought or because we've developed that personal relationship. And I can flip on that native side and the non-native side and be like, okay, and so here's how we tackle that versus I do have a couple people, or I've had who the one hour that we had together was the only hour of the week where they would speak with somebody in all English and all native style let's say. And I don't know, I do think that it's a little more challenging sometimes to work with people who have such limited exposure they can't choose, right?

 

Christina:

Yeah.

 

Michelle:

Sometimes it is difficult because they will want to not necessarily default to another language. Maybe we have another one in common, even if it's something like French, I've told you before, I have this rule where it's all English because it's one hour of your life and

We have to facilitate the learnings that you'll be working on and all that. But I do feel that there is more resistance sometimes because they have to be willing to put their brains in this context with me. And because I am the only one, it is so uncomfortable to spend that time and do it for sustain it for an hour versus if they were able to act. And I do tell them, I'm like, can you make a friend? Can you make a friend online? So that I'm not the only person. A lot of not just responsibility, it's too heavy. I feel when they have to context change like this and in an out and then I send them a message and they have to do it again.

 

Christina:

And I think your job, in that case of what I'm understanding, please correct me, is very much giving guided feedback. And that is your role is giving that feedback and not necessarily correcting in the, you said this wrong way, but requiring them to level up. Whereas, and that's a different process than gaining fluency and just sort of automatizing, which is something that you would definitely be doing more with a friend, more with someone that you can just kind of chat with. And those processes are very different. Your goals are to stretch their range, stretch their accuracy, stretch, their communicative ability, where with a friend it's kind of practicing and setting those neural pathways basically so that they're sort of move faster. And I think those are two different, again, two goals. And so having two, at least people you're practicing that with makes sense. I think that's logical.

 

Michelle:

And even just if you think about what they'll encounter later on, because it's not necessarily career training or development, but it's always oriented that way. So it's like, alright, do you want the first time that you talk to a group of native speaking people to be at the interview that you go to for a new job? I think it's better to work that in beforehand. And these are conversations I can have with them that encourage good habit building in the process of where they go. But it's also not everyone takes the feedback. Lemme just be honest.

 

Christina:

No, and I would be terrible. I would fight you every moment. I know as a learner I tend to find that very uncomfortable, very, very useful. But I'd be very comfortable,

 

Michelle:

Wait, let's lean into this because I actually think it's a good opportunity to talk about something I've seen come on your posts a lot, so I'm going to call it your love or your rather learned love maybe of using writing as a way to make progress, which a lot of people complain about. And I would say the same. If I had to write long essays, I would not actually. I would not do them. That would be something you would look forward to. So can we talk about how or why you want to push into that? Why you encourage and why you feel so important?

 

Christina:

Well I think writing, for me, again, my personal preference for writing just in any language is sort of clarifying those thoughts and clarifying, it's a great way to clarify what you're thinking and not just kind of vomit whatever comes to the top of your head. So there's that part of it that is a personal preference. It's something that I really enjoy. But from a teaching perspective, it's something that I've seen really, really, really transform my students' English level. The writing has some benefits that speaking doesn't have, and so some of them are basically that you have time

To go back and see what you've written. You have time to look up new words, you have time to organize your thoughts. And for a language, learning a language, that's great. I have time to sort of check to see if this word is masculine or feminine or if whatever it is or how do I say this? I have time to do that. I also have a list. I mean I can look through you and I have talked about this. I look at my diaries, my journals from when I lived in France and it's cringe city both on, I was 22 years old. So of course it's going to be cringey in that way, but it's also, the French is just atrocious. But It's great. I can see the progression of that. You also have this really controlled environment where you can practice, you can input, I've learned this new phrase and I want to try it out. You can sort of try it out. And again, this is expanding that range that your accuracy, your range as you're writing, which is much more difficult to do in speaking.

You can do it in speaking of course. I mean I recommend that with my students. They'll have their little game for the week on their post-it. They'll have some expressions they want to try to use in their meetings or whatever, and that's kind of their homework or whatever. And it's kind of fun, but it's much more difficult to do that because if the occasion to use that expression doesn't arise, you just don't get to use it. Whereas with writing, you can do that. And so I've seen it really transform my students' English ability. I worked, again, I worked in a private language school for most of my career. And to kind of go back to that, English is a proxy kind of thing in Spain, which is I think different from France, please again, correct me if I'm wrong here in Spain, it was very, very typical to send your kids to afterschool English classes. So they would go to school, have English at school, and then if you had disposable income, you would spend money to send your kids to an afterschool program where they would learn English generally with native English teachers. And so this whole idea, this belief of this native teacher supremacy with of born from this and sort of perpetuated by the market and I was one of those native English speakers, it's completely illegal to advertise that you have native English teacher, native English speaker teachers. It's completely illegal. It's kind of gone. It's been a huge controversy in my little sector for the past 15 years.

So that entire system got perpetuated. And so these kids would come and would be at school in these English classes from the time they're like six until they're 18 and come in do three hours of English a week. And with the expectation that throughout that process they're getting certifications. So they're getting a B one certificate, they're getting a B two, a C one, and that's sort of how Spanish jobs, searches and things kind of work. There's a lot of, much like France in that sense, you have to have the certification to

 

Michelle:

Where's your paper? Yeah,

 

Christina:

Yeah, exactly. And so that's part of it. It's this bigger system. And so in those exams you have to do writing. There's writing as a section of it. And so you'd prepare your students for this writing section, which makes sense. But there's also this sense of preparing younger kids to write a diary. One of my friends who was a trainer, she started a whole program called the English Diaries. And so these kids are maybe nine, 10 years old. They would start the term and they'd start the year with their little diaries, with the marketing and everything,

And they would start by writing five sentences in the past about what they did. At the weekend, I went to grandma's house, I ate whatever I played with my friends, I did this. And the next weekend they would do the same thing. And then the next weekend you'd teach them to put linking words in there. I went to grandma's house and I ate dah. And you'd do that for about a month and then you would get them to add in negative sentences and all of this, it's very, very for little kids,

But they were forced to kind of practice this and it sort of expanded. And so I was teaching those level kids, but once I was teaching older people, adults and teaching teenagers kind of use a similar process, not about the past and not so kind of set up, but it's like, okay, let's see. Can you write this text using these words you, and then they'd give me the text, I would underline or I underline the mistakes or underline things that aren't great, I don't correct them and then do it again. And then you redraft. And then it would be really interesting because by the end of the course, not only were they able to sort of write much better, but they were able to include a lot of that grammar vocabulary, all of that range really, really expanded. Of course, we're practicing speaking in class, of course we're practicing all these other things, but the writing is sort of this evidence

And this sort of hard copy of that process and being able to see that. And so I do, I really, really think it's transformative and something that I really encourage. My students don't want to do it generally, and they are the people that are now, the students that I work with now generally are working in English. It is not writing an email. We're not talking about that. Use AI for that. That's fine. We're talking about the process of writing. We're talking about using it to improve your English and your thoughts. I don't care if anybody else sees it. It's not the writing the email that is useful or is important in this particular case, that's not why we're doing it. So I really believe in writing, and you're right, writing an essay is one thing. Writing a journal article, sorry, a journal entry about what you did the weekend in the language you're learning is difficult. It requires effort, but it actually helps you to automatize that language. That's why.

 

Michelle:

So we're completely on the same page by the way, that it's a good exercise and that it's something that is very, in terms of how you can make a cognitive foundation, I call it cognitive architecture. People that I use fancy terms for no reason. It's not for no reason. It's literally because of the background I have. It's like I can't, right? I will be honest, I have a hide the vegetables way around it because I work with only adults and they are a very, very, very special group, a special demographic, especially those who are generally, they're, if they are not working in some leadership position, they're not far away. So they're not used to being told what to do. And how do you become a trainer for somebody who is normally in that more kind of dominant role in the workplace? How do you guide them?

And so the way that I go about it, and what's so funny is I try to really not put together the podcast world with the trading world. And I also also think no one has the time to listen. So hopefully they don't hear this, they don't learn your secret, they don't learn your, but truthfully, if I say to them writing, they would never, never, never. I know for sure. So what I do, a lot of the work I do is very scenario based. And if we do any sort of more grammar stuff, any tense stuff, it's always in the scenarios that represent their real life. And so what's funny is they are writing, writing exactly what you talked about, looking at the different tenses. And actually I do a lot of these kind of variation exercises where they have to flip it around as many times as possible because I have to be clear that they know what they're choosing when they're choosing it. So it's a big mental exercise, but they also like it because it's very complex and it's stretching them and they don't feel like they're being forced into an academic space, which I think a lot of people have horrible memories of teachers being like, you must write 10 sentences on this topic, where else you can't go to lunch?

And I feel that because it's a little bit, I dunno, because it's hidden, right? Because I'm basically not telling them that it's essentially writing. They will take it on themselves sometimes to create additional sentences, paragraphs and build from that. And I'm like, well, that's interesting. So you marked, because I have them do an evaluation of themselves before they start with me and they'll be like, oh, I hate writing. No, no, no, do not do this. And I'm like, what's funny is if you put all these paragraphs together, you've kind of made yourself a nice essay out of this. Did you realize that? And now we can start looking at global sentence, not even sentence structure, paragraph structure. We can look at how your logic is flowing and because many of them, maybe not for an email, but let's say you have to put out a company memo, are you going to be able to do that? Right? Very quickly maybe, but not really at the same way. No.

 

Christina:

Right. And you have to also, I think there's a huge, won't go into this whole thing, but AI obviously being very, very based bias towards a very American logic, which is appropriate if you are working in that sort of context, but may not be appropriate in other context. And so being really clear about what you want to get from having a good model so that if you do use AI to tidy things up or to whatever, you're able to judge that. This is not something I plan on talking about, but I'd be really interested kind of putting this out if it does make it to the podcast for people to get in touch with me. I was teaching these actual French, these kids from France this past couple weeks. So they come to do a study abroad, they're business school students that come to study abroad here in Spain.

And their program is in English, it's not in Spanish. And so the first module is business English essentially. And the idea to prepare them for the next modules in digital marketing or whatever they're doing that are in English. And for years and years and years, I mean for years and years, this is the third time I've done it. And another kind of similar courses I've done. They've write a cv, they write a resume, write a cv, and then we do interview questions. And that's kind of the end of the module. And this year I had to change absolutely everything because why would you learn to write a cv? I use AI to generate my cv, I'm going to use SHA GBT. Why would I not do that? Obviously I know what a good CD looks like, but of course I'm going to use that. And so I can't expect them to go through this whole slog of learning how to write stuff in, do we use passive voice?

How do we write this profile? How do we do this? And so it's just really interesting. Those demands change. And one of the writing texts that I always have them do is to write a response to a client complaint. And I did that this year and twisting was like, I shouldn't have done that. That was stupid. That was absolutely stupid because they're never, no one is ever going to, not no one, but you really don't need to learn how to do that. You need to learn how to create the prompt to put that in so that you get a comprehensive, you are making decisions. And just really interesting how from one year to the next, that entire exercise, the entire section of life is like, we don't need to do this anymore. We need to approach this in a different way. And saying that the writing, I'm not going to teach them how to write a client complaint letter in the future or a covering letter or something like that in the future. But I do need to, writing is still valuable. Writing as an exercise itself is still valuable. And like you said, I love that of sort of reflect, answer these questions like the reflection questions. You're kind of putting them in, getting them to do that in a certain way that is, they're writing, but they're thinking about something and they're using writing to clarify their thinking, which is the whole thing, right? It's not the essay.

 

Michelle:

I do think that there are other skills that you could still learn from something like a client complaint exercise. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Because have to still engage and if you can't create the response, and even if you can ask an AI to create it if you don't know what it's creating, and this is always the pushback that I think most people are giving inside of the industry. And this was happening by the way, with me even before chat PT came out, I think, I don't remember. It was a few years back and some article broke out. And because I work with so many tech people, everyone's reading

 

Christina:

They're already using. Yeah. And

 

Michelle:

Everyone's like, okay, so do you think you'll still be around because you're just going to be replaced? And I was like, you need to first of all approach this better because that is not the way to ask the question. Number two, it's very, very interesting because I think if you know anything about, or we can all see a little bit, right? Chachi BT is great, but it's not perfect of, and you still have to edit a lot, even if what it's given you is not a bad start. How will you do this if you don't already know what you want at the end? Modify

 

Christina:

It.

Yeah, exactly. That was literally the conversation I had with these students is I approached it with the CV writing we did, we sat down, we listened to some different videos, clips of videos of different HR people talking about how do they accept how they feel about cvs written by AI that you can tell or written by ai, a different approach. And we talked about it and how to get that balance. And they were really in the CV writing aspect, they were really sensible. They were like 20 years old and they were really sensible about that. And they did. They had some great cvs in terms of formatting and stuff like that, and sort of knowing what needs to go where and all of that. And chat GPT definitely helped them,

But they knew what they needed to include and they did a great job with that, with the client complaint letter. Yes, I completely agree. Of course it wasn't, we did a whole module on dealing with client complaints, which is different and making decisions based on all of that, but the actual letter, the generation of the thanks to your goodwill with us for a number of those kinds of words and that kind of wording, yes. Knowing what sounds okay is there and knowing that it doesn't have to be as fancy as it would be in French, for example. Yeah, I'm waiting.

 

Michelle:

Yes. Bowing to, yeah, bowing to you like, oh my God, yeah,

 

Christina:

It's

 

Michelle:

A whole separate topic we'll talk about.

 

Christina:

Exactly. Having them understand that and having a good example is great, but I don't think in the future I'll have them kind of, because I get them to essentially memorize little formulaic phrases that you, and I know looking forward to hearing from you, that phrase you use that. And so kind of memorizing some of that formulaic language that you can use anywhere. I don't think I'll approach it in that way in the future. I don't know how I'll approach it,

But I don't think that that's the approach that I will take because I think it is sort of a waste of time when there's other things that could be used better. The whole thing with love Tingo sort of started again with my experience as a language teacher in this afterschool kind of classes. And years ago I had this student would be the beginning of my career, the student name was Sophia, and Sophia was the ideal kid. She came into class every time on time, she always participated. She did her homework, she raised her hand, she did everything that you're supposed to do in a class. The problem was Sophia was failing. She had a really, really hard time. She could do the grammar exercises just fine, anything that was really structured she could do, but she couldn't speak English, she couldn't get put it together on her own.

And the midterm, I had to have a meeting with her mom basically to say, look, this is the situation. And I was talking to my director at the time and she said, well, what are you going to tell her that she needs to do? I was like, I don't know. This girl's doing everything she's supposed to do on paper. She's ideal, right? She is fantastic. And I dunno, and I don't know what the problem is. I don't have a clue what the problem is or how to treat her problem. Almost going a doctor kind of, I can't diagnose it and I don't know how to help her.

She's already going to school English at school. She's coming here for three hours a week. We have her on these. She has these private tutoring lessons that are an extra half an hour. I can't know what else to do. And so I have this very uncomfortable conversation with her mom, basically telling her that we managed to get her to pass and all this stuff. And it was really frustrating because in her class there was this other kid, this kid Diego, who was friends with her same class at school. They'd been in the English class together from six years old. Same again on paper, really similar. Diego did nothing. He did nothing. Michelle, he sat there, he spoke in Spanish with all of his friends all the time, and you try to catch him out and be like, Diego, what's the answer to number six? He'd say B. And he knew what it was. And he was great. He did no study, never did his homework. I had a doctor to his mom about him not working and he was fine. He did great. He was fantastic at using English. And I was like, what is this difference? Why is Diego like this and poor Sophia like this? And how can I teach Sophia to be more Diego?

Why is he finding it so much easier than Sophia? And I don't mean it in a sort of like, oh, there's some magical magic wand thing, but in this kind of like, what is this mystery? Why is this happening? And so I did a master's degree basically because I felt like I didn't have enough knowledge and understanding to help Sophia really. And people like her of course.

And of course, and as you know, when you go and do more advanced degrees, it doesn't answer any questions. It just creates more questions, which is definitely the case for me. But it's been really interesting because I've really become just so interested in these kind of individual differences and what are some of those differences. And it's this complex system. It's this complex system of variables. It's not intelligence, it's not necessarily motivation, it's not all of these things. It's how those things interact with each other. And so it's not necessarily an easy treatment either. And so kind of going through this, and once I sort of understood this bigger picture that there isn't the magic bullet, there's not this one thing that it is, I sort of started approaching language classes in a different way, teaching language.

And so I went into these classes instead. I used to do sort of really kind of cheesy, but typical kind of class at the beginning of the year where you set the rules for your class. And I used to do it with different colors of paper. So in English class, we must, and the kids would sort of brainstorm some ideas in English class, we can't. And they would brainstorm and all these things. And one year I said, okay, well, I'm going to come in and instead of doing an English class, I'm going to change the question and it's going to be good language learners must good language learners can. And we kind of created this atmosphere of my goal being, I don't care what you guys get on your exams, I don't care. We're not going to focus on that as the outcome. That is not our KPI. If you'll, what we're looking at here is how can I help you become the best language learners possible? My goal as a teacher is to help you learn, you've used this before, this idea too. Learn these habits, learn these kind of approaches to language learning. So once you come out of our little time together, a year together, whatever, you're able to go about that, the language learning process in a different way and able to, if you are Sophia, you're able to use your agency, your accountability to sort of solve that problem and figure it out. Sophia was 12 years old, so it's not on her, but if I could teach Sophia again, I would hopefully be able to equip her with some of those metacognitive skills of evaluating what's working, what isn't working, and tried to find a solution to that to get out of this and to become the best learner language learner possible.

And it worked in the sense that I never went back after that. That was sort the approach I've taken to language teaching or language coaching from then on was very much, let's help people become the best language learners they can be. And that means something different for different people. And that's totally fine. So Love Tingo is very much born out of that idea and with that mission empowering language learners to make those decisions and to be accountable for their own learning and use their own agency for learning. And that's it. And it might not, my journey might look totally different from your journey and it might look totally different. And then if we both go into learning Italian, it might be different. But if we both go into learning German, it might be similar. And my husband's journey learning German will be different. And that's totally fine. And where we are in each step of the way is going to be different, and that's okay. But if we have a little bit of an understanding about how we operate as learners,

We can reach those goals. We can achieve things. And so that is the whole idea of love and sort of the different manifestations of that. And some of them are sort of stories and some of it is podcasts and sort of informing and giving people some sort of background insight about how languages are learned so they're able to sort make those decisions for themselves. So yeah, I mean, I think, for example, I listened to your podcast with Sean, the first one that you had, and both of you comparing how you've sort figured out your own method of learning, of learning a language. And that's absolutely valid. And there's no one to tell you like, oh, you didn't do that in the correct way. You used your agency and your accountability to figure it out for yourself in a way that made sense for you

And your way might not make any sense to me at all. And that's totally fine. We need to have the skills to be able to make those decisions. So yeah, that's the idea with Love Tingo. And up until really recently, the only way you could learn a language was going to structured formal classes and having a teacher teach you, expose you to this level of vocabulary and this kind of grammar and this kind of thing. Also, that's not the case now. It's not the case now. And so sometimes there's an information overload and what do I do? Do I just go with a teacher? Do I just have this teacher? And I've got students that definitely want to, they want me to do that. They want to delegate all of the decision making to me, which I feel quite uncomfortable with, but that's their beliefs. That's fine. That's how they believe about things. And we talk about things a little bit, but I do make a lot of those decisions and that settles them into feeling like they are able to make progress and there's nothing wrong with that. So yeah, that's the overall

 

Michelle:

So good because it's stuff that people I think need to hear more of because if this were the norm, neither of us would be here right now. Do you know what I mean? Neither of us would be trying to do podcasts and put out more information and showing up every single day and trying to just engage in more conversation because this is unfortunately not the norm. This is not the way, and we can talk all we want about education systems being broken and reform being slow, but also on that individual level, it is not currently in the culture of the, I think, language learning industry, but also just the mindset of being a language learner. It's always sort of this almost commercialized way of, alright, so got to do this, got to find that, got to go for the formula, right? Unlock the formula that will work. The unlocking. Yeah, unlocking, yeah. There's something in between where I do agree that it is a little bit of unlocking, you have to unlock what works for you. But I just feel it's confusing when it's portrayed, especially with people who are, I think the section of the internet I have the most issue with is the people who are polyglots trying to sell their method that worked for them. But say that it will definitely work for everyone because we have been down this road with Slim Fast. We've been down this road with Jenny Craig. We've been, you know what I mean? We have literally found every single, I don't know, I thought we broke this model of one size fits all, right? But I don't think enough people have been talking about it with this level of honesty and maybe just transparency on these topics. I do think, I don't know how you feel on this, but I feel many people, if they're working for a language school or they're, you have a reputation to protect and you kind of don't want to go out there and be like, oh, everything my school has had me do for the last X number of years has been total crap. Because I hate going into the classroom evaluating people and making them think that their worth is based on whatever their level is.

And I do think that we're in a new time of empowerment also in the professional sense in the industry. You can be a very well-qualified, knowledgeable professional and still have your own kind of agency and ideas on how we can push to be better. It's like, I hope it will grow, but I unfortunately don't see at this present moment beyond you me, beyond a couple of people, I've found that it's this, there's momentum there. I do think that, I think it's a good idea. I think a lot of people talk about it. I just see very few people doing something about it. So love to lingo is something that you've decided to do about it in an actionable concrete way,

 

Christina:

Right?

 

Michelle:

Yeah,

 

Christina:

I mean, so in terms of language, so learner training was a huge, huge, maybe not huge, it was a huge area of interest. At the beginning of the two thousands. There's a lot of research about, again, this where I'm stuck mentally is kind of beginning of the two thousands. And there was included, I've got some copies even of language books that there was kind of in the teacher's notes, they were like, oh, train your learners to use a dictionary in this way and this kind of thing. And then that got taken over by CD ROMs by technology. And so the publishers would say, well, we we're going to get rid of this. We have to eliminate something. We're going to eliminate this and put a CD ROM so people can practice the vocabulary in that way or whatever. And then it kind of got just completely shoved aside and now everything is evolving in a different way. So now it's not like the book is the CD wrong? There's no CD ROMs, but

Got overtaken by technology. So I think that there is idea of learner training and stuff. What did exist? It just kind of lost the battle to technology in that sense. And I think what I see from my sector, again in Spain, the language school sector is huge's huge money maker. It's huge. I think in terms of European markets for especially English language teaching, I would imagine Spain is, if not the biggest, it's one of the biggest sectors. So people absolutely are changing. There's a lot of change from my point of view. What I see, there's a huge amount of change there. And in my personal experience, again, when I'm running this language school, you have level tests and you're consultant essentially. People come in and say, I need to do something. How do I do this? And those consultations completely changed from the beginning of my experience there. To the end. People now know how to do certain things. They have a lot more knowledge and a lot more empowerment about what to do. And unfortunately, in some ways they're a lot more demanding because of this. But I think that there's a sort of reason for that. Once they have enough knowledge, but they're trying to fit into this old model, but that model doesn't fit. So they're just being really demanding about something

That doesn't work for them. So great, go do something else. I can't tell you that because I'm selling these courses. I mean, I can tell you to a certain degree, we don't have this, I'm not saying for my company, I'm saying for a company I was working for, we don't have this. You could try this thing that might not be what you want. And trying to inform people in that way. So I just think now it's almost like there are people who are a lot more informed, but again, don't have necessarily enough information to make really informed decisions, but enough information to know that if I do this, this is how I want it to be, and it's not going to be that way. I dunno if that makes sense. It does a mismatched,

 

Michelle:

Yeah. Yeah, because it's also about time, right? Absolutely. Because if we could have everything evolve at the same rate pace, everyone's kind of on the same page and everything is kind of working together. But no, you could be someone who is feeling, and I do think this is where I'm taking it more on the teaching side that is not necessarily tied to language. It's just like anyone who's ever been a teacher of anything, the feeling of being so disempowered, disengaged, so detached from the profession itself because you do feel like there's no point because hitting a wall all the time because systemic issues, because where you are, because I don't know, maybe in 10 years it'll be better, but right now it's not the time. And so I do agree that probably what you see is a very, I do think it might be different because of the concentration for sure.

My perspective on this is built over many different types of, I would say just firsthand, but also hearing from people around the world, the things that they're stuck in, the things that they can't push back on and the resounding cry being like, well, that's what it is. We can't do more. And we have to almost pretend every day when we go in that we're doing something beneficial, when in fact we hate it. So I do think many people try to leave the teaching profession because they're so burned out, because they're still, it is exhausting trying to push against something that has that mismatch and be it professional or learner, right?

 

Christina:

Yeah. I mean, God mean my heart and my soul just sort of goes to teachers in any capacity at the moment. I think, again, like we've said, things go at different rates and I think at the moment, the external pressure I put on any kind of teacher, again, especially if you're teaching children, the people you are serving, your clients are the secondary people. And so in this case, if you're teaching children, but their parents are the people who are paying or your clients, really, it's a really complicated situation at the moment. And I think part of it is, of course, we don't have cultural hegemony anymore, and so everybody's got different values and different things and all of this, and it becomes very, very, very hard. I am very happy that I'm not in that position anymore. And definitely admire people, teachers who are able to be in that position, even if they are doing feel that they can't make the difference they want to make because of all of these different factors. Shit, I mean, it's just got to be hard. Just breaks. I mean, how can it not break you? Especially if you do care? Because I think that's one of the other issues is that it's like, no, I do care, but I care and I can, I'm just getting

So much pushback from so many places that of course your response out of that is like, well, I'm just going to stop caring. I'm just going to show up. And I feel like that's unfortunately, and it's an understandable response. Unfortunately it not, it's the response that it is, but it's completely understandable. I think for a lot of people. I think that there will be a change at some point, and I think it will become, I mean, I don't know what that looks like, but I think the idea of being in a classroom, and I don't think that's going to be the model of the future.

 

Michelle:

No. Yeah. I think just a personal opinion on this, I feel that any type of education system is still kind of subject to econ 1 0 1, meaning supply and demand. So we still have to think about it in that sense, I think, and when we talk about learner empowerment agency, this kind of movement to make sure that people who understand that it is not just a passive activity, that you have a lot of agency over where you go and your future and the decisions that you make, this will start to shift in a way from the opposite direction. I think a lot of the talk right now is on changing systems, reforming just broken education systems. But if everyone's crying broken education system and you're trying to go about it by talking to the ministry or department of whatever, there is a breakdown that is kind of outside of your control, for sure.

But how long will it take to resolve versus if we can start shifting in a, I mean, to me it's a more direct way just going directly to the source, to the people who are attending the learning. It'll go directly to the learners. This will start to shift the culture, the conversation. This will start to shift the demands also of the market, and you will have to adapt in order to meet the new needs of now. But I don't know, it's kind of an experiment. It's like a theory that I have. I'm, I think I'm going to hedge my beds on going in the learn side because a big part of me that's like, it would be great if I could find a way to maybe make a training for professional development training. How do we, yeah. But then I would be stuck inside of that whole thing for how many years. I don't have the patience, I think, to be there my whole life.

 

Christina:

But I feel like that's the whole thing too. I mean, I think what you're talking about is sort of reforming it almost in a, I mean, I hate to use this word, but almost in a grassroots way.

 

Michelle:

I've literally used the same word. Yeah,

 

Christina:

That's the word that comes to mind. I don't want to use it because all the connotations. But so using it in that way, and I think again, that's definitely, I definitely see people doing that on the ground. I do see in a certain way, and I do think that that's actually happening. Things homeschooling is a really good, I mean, it's something that I don't, again, has a lot of these other connotations, but you can see that as a direct reaction to this.

And you just take your kids out of this other system and you're doing this other thing. And I think that that's a direct reaction to it. Of course, it has this other whole other thing, but the problem is to say we're just reacting to it in a different way, in a certain sense. And I think that, again, that personal agency, and definitely what you mean with I can't choose where I'm going. I had a conversation with my niece, my Spanish niece, and she got her marks back from French class actually, and her father's Moroccan. And so he's just pissed off. He's so angry that she got a five out of 10 in French. He's just so angry. It's not like he speaks French to her or anything. He's done nothing to facilitate this, but he's really, really angry about it. So we're having this conversation and she's, what, 12? And so we're having this conversation and she's like, my French teacher, she money is what you say. She has it out for me. She hates me. You make one mistake with an accent and blah and all this stuff. And her mom comes, she's like, oh yeah, we just have to wait until she gets a new teacher next year. And my brain just,

I was like, okay, I'm going to do my, I'm going to be the auntie. I'm going to be the auntie and just be able to say what I want to say. And I was just like, okay, so you've got this situation. You've got this teacher, you've got this situation. How are you going to interact with that situation? How are you going to use your limited agency, not tell your mom to go say, how are you going to solve this problem and get the results that you want from this class? How are you going to react to that? What options do you have? And her mom looked at me and she's like, oh, that was a really good question. I'm like, I know. Why are you feeding into this narrative that she, why are you doing that? You're creating a victim. She's victimized herself.

Why are you doing that? And my sister-in-law is fantastic. She's fantastic. There's nothing, she's whatever. That's not an issue there, but it's that, okay, what options do we have? How can we go about achieving these goals? And I think that is my little grassroots thing that with, and this is with kids, it's easier to do when I'm talking to my clients who are in their forties working at a company, it's like, oh, I can't do this. It's like, okay, well let's look at our options. How can we solve this? It's a little bit of a different situation, but that still is always a question that you have. It's okay, this is where I'm at. How can I approach this situation? What options do I have available? What opportunities do I have? And so you're not a victim of your, oh, I didn't learn English when I was a kid, Or I was never good at this, or my English teacher was not very good. And it's like, that's personal accountability, guys. Let's bring it back to what we can control. And we've all had terrible experiences, learning languages. That's part of, unfortunately, that's just kind what it's been like. But you still learned French. I still learned French at some degree and still overcame that. And so let's teach people how to do that.

 

Michelle:

Yeah, I think it's not letting the narrative, the socially accepted narrative, I think control the parts of your life that haven't, that haven't even happened yet. If you are just closing the door and people tend to think, okay, limiting beliefs. So it's just the power of the mind. No, it's not just the power of the mind, it's also follow through. It's also intentional steps taken in alignment. But there's something there in what you're saying where it's like this kind of switch that needs to happen. And I do think I have the benefit of being able to, number one, choose who I work with. Number two, people who tend to work with me are not the ones who are like, oh, no, I'm a victim. Because we go through,

 

Christina:

That's why they're in those positions

 

Michelle:

As well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You had to have gotten to this level of growth, I think in order to understand what it's like to go to the next step, but for early stage, and where does it start? Children, literally. And you're right. And for sure, you learn a lot when you look at how a kid is approaching things and you're just like, there are questions, there are observations, there are things I'm going to talk with your, not necessarily talk about to intervene and criticize, but to just bring into the conversation as like a, Hey, have you thought about this? Because, and you're right, this sort of third party perspective, that may not always exist, but when it does, it could be a benefit and could redirect the next X number of years of her life. Who knows? Right? Right.

 

Christina:

And exactly. I see my role in that case is sort of like, how are we going to approach this situation and how have you thought what solutions can it's coaching is generally what it is, and that's fine. And I think that that's really helpful. And I do see that that might be the way forward in everything in terms of education is with ai, with all of this stuff. It's like, okay, well let's teach people to be able to, instead of being controlled by that narrative, we absolutely are. I mean, I'm absolutely controlled by all my narratives, but I can choose the narrative as well and see what options are available and where One of the things about good language learners, this is research based based on studies about, they're called, I'm not, it sounds like a bad word, but they are called good language learners studies.

 

Michelle:

That's what it's called. A term. Term. Yeah, it's an actual term. It's just said that, and they're determined by different things, but one of the things that good language learners always do is they use their agency. They attribute, they often attribute just successful people. I'm sure you know this from psychology. Successful people in most domains will attribute their success often to luck actually. But they've used their agency. So when you look at it, when you tease it all the way out, they'll say, oh, I was just really lucky that I was able to have this teacher. But then they've used their agency in some way to really take advantage of that because they've had other students in that same class with that same teacher that haven't reached the same levels that they have or they haven't had these sorts of experiences. And so it comes down to using agency for everything, for everything. When I'm in a situation, obviously I don't have agency over what's going on in the world right now, but I can sort of figure out how I'm going to manage for this little space that I'm standing on. That's kind where my responsibility is and where I can bring my own personal accountability agency to that

And how I show up and all of those things. I think that's the same thing for learning anything and how can I, instead of talking to myself with the French kids again, I had, last week I had this kid and it was really, really challenging. It was about 19 years old, mentally about 14. And that's kind just the kind of things that happened. He was like, I just renewed. I was like, why are you saying this? Why are you, he is like, why didn't learn I didn't learn English back in the day, so this is really hard for me know. That's really hard. I know. So how are we going to figure out, we have class together for five hours. Those hours are going to pass. You can't have your phone. You're not allowed to have your mobile phone. Those hours are going to pass regardless. How are we going to approach this in a way that you're taking advantage of this time? And that was sort of what we did. I can't say like, oh, it was like a miracle. Absolutely not. There were days where he was with me, he sat with me and he did his work, and he was able to communicate in English probably for the first time in his life. and there were other days that he just completely checked out and literally looked out the window for five hours. But at least we had that conversation. And I think that that's sort of where that starts of changing that personal narrative and being able to take that. Then when he goes into a job and he has to learn how to use Excel, I mean, I can't think of anything else, but yeah, you can use, yeah. Yes. Well, what options we have, we can look at YouTube, we can ask chat GPT, we can do these different things, but instead of being like, I have no idea how to do this, so I'm just going to not do it right.

 

Christina:

Yeah. There's so many things I want to react to just from the French side of things, but also from the fact that parents and teachers who also reinforce this narrative, it is the most destructive thing. I think you literally cut off a kid's chances before they even start their life. And what good do you think you're doing by feeding this? I actually, it pisses me off a lot when I hear it and I see it and I hear it represented in society a lot. And it's like, oh, well, because oh, if your father didn't make you go to blah, blah, blah, and you spent all that time in basketball instead of English, you would've blah, blah, blah. And it's like, excuse me. What good are you giving this kid? Because that kid's just taking all this in. Yeah. It pisses me off a lot.

 

Christina:

Yeah. This victimizing ourselves. I want to make very clear, I'm completely guilty of this as well. Definitely guilty. When you come up against some sort of uncomfortable truth about yourself that you're not able to do something, it's so much easier to say, oh, well I didn't do this in the past, or, oh my, whatever situation was my whatever situation. And it's very easy to forgive yourself for not doing something totally guilty of this, but also sort of aware when I'm doing it, it's like, oh, you're just keeping yourself stuck in that you're screwing yourself over here. If that feels more comfortable then actually taking some action towards improving, then great. Then just do that. But you've made that choice.

 

Michelle:

Yes, exactly. And it's a choice. And you don't realize it's a choice when no, even if it's your default, it's still your default choice.

 

Christina:

Right,

 

Michelle:

Right.

 

Christina:

Yeah. And it, it's your choice. You're making that choice about the stories that you're allowing to limit. That is the limiting belief of the limiting belief. Yeah, exactly. It doesn't really woo woo. It doesn't really woo woo, and it kind of is. It's kind of take it, but it's not like magic. It's not

 

Michelle:

Invalid either, because of course our thoughts shape our reality, and of course, whatever, it doesn't mean that they write our reality. It just means that how we choose to see things are what we tell ourselves and then what we believe, and then therefore that's how we respond and react. It's like that's basic psychology. I don't dunno how to explain,

 

Christina:

Right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. It is, it's basic psychology and it is just That is true.

 

Michelle:

I know.

 

Christina:

And I think that that's something that again, needs to, is missing from the broader conversation about, especially on social media, about language learning. Like you're saying the Paul OTs that learned this and we're going to do this. And it's like, well, that was your experience and it's fantastic, and you're conflating your personal experience with this sort of absolute truth. And that being those two things. And it's like, yes, you had all of these experiences. This was your story that you've told yourself, this is how this has happened. You've reacted in this way where that's not going to be the way that I necessarily, that works for me. And that's okay. Let's just have that different, I wonder, can you think of a good A DM that means the same thing is there's more than one way to skin a cat that does not,

 

Michelle:

Oh, I know. I hate using that one because it's like, oh, poor cats. Poor cats. Yeah,

 

Christina:

I know I want to get away from, but I don't know how to say that in that same way. But yeah, there's more than one way of doing something.

 

Michelle:

It's more, I think people have said there's more than one road to get to your destination or something like that. It's not really an idiom. It's more like what people say.

 

Christina:

It's not as much of the sort of active way of doing something. But yeah, it is this,

 

Michelle:

We'll figure it out. We'll write a new one. I

 

Christina:

Dunno. You'll make our own idioms.

 

Michelle:

I know, I know. I'm wondering, before we wrap up, if you can give us a preview as to what love to lingo will have in this coming year, what you're loosely planning.

 

Christina:

Yeah, so I've just finished a really, really interesting, well, I think it's really interesting. It was my dream. I've been in the works for years, series of posts on Substack that is aimed at intermediate level language learners. And the idea is that there are, I think 25 posts we would just go through. They're short. You go through one a day and learn the basics of language learning. So I talk a lot about things like comprehensible input and things. I dunno, the noticing hypothesis. There's some basic theory about language acquisition and language learning there. So that with the aim of people being able to make those decisions based on a scientific background instead of what someone says works for them. So this is what science sort of says, or evidence has told us works and doesn't work and how it works. And also little techniques about how people can build up their own self-practice the outside.

So not going to language classes or Duolingo or anything, but how you can really take advantage of all of that evidence-based research and apply that in ways to work on your language learning. So that happened in January. All of those posts are free, there's no paywall or anything. And I really invite people to take a look there. I do want to do something similar for beginning level learners. I'm hoping to start doing Italian actually, and sort of doing this as sort of like, okay, well how would I apply this and what is working for me in this way as a beginning Italian learner? And again, in the future, possibly do something similar for more advanced learners. Because the way you approach learning a language is going to be different through those different phases. And of course, I'm looking mainly at European languages. I think obviously if I were to learn a language with a different script, be completely different as well.

So it's very much in that space. And the thing that I'm the most excited about that I am hoping to get off the ground by the end, at least the pilot off the ground by the end of the month, is called Love Lingo Connection. And the idea is to create a space where we can have language exchange classes, but in a structured way online. So the idea would be they'd be facilitated. So we'd have, let's say four people learning, four English speakers learning Spanish, four Spanish speakers learning English, and I would be facilitating sort of activities that they're doing with each other. So you're not in an exchange where you kind, well, what are we going to talk about and how do we do that? And it's kind of awkward and you get a chance to talk with different people around the world. And that's the idea at the moment, is to start with English and Spanish because of the language I feel the most comfortable with. And then possibly move into other languages facilitated by other expert teachers and coaches and things that can bring some sort of enjoyment and structure to that kind of experience. So hopefully getting people to connect, but not in a language class, not sort of like these are the corrections and we're learning past simple or something, but in a different way.

So that's what I'm really, really excited about to work on. So hopefully the first thing will happen in the end of February, but hopefully by the time this releases we'll have had some experience.

 

Michelle:

Yeah. Well, yes, I'm looking at the schedule probably, probably by the time this episode airs, this will probably be up and running and you'll probably have some other things it That'd

 

Christina:

Be great. Everybody will join. It'll be, but yeah, there's obviously going to be a learning curve there. But yeah, I'm really excited about that. And it's again, something that I sort of in a selfish way want to get off the ground so that then I can have a wonderful French English speaker do what so I can participate or French and have that sort of safe space there where we can practice and feel connecting with people. But isn't really a class, I am not personally that interested in having a really structured class, but that again, that's me as a learner, that's what I'm interested in.

 

Michelle:

And I think actually what you're describing, it's something that's really effective for a lot of people because they are looking for something in between formal classes and just exactly get on a call. What do we talk about? No idea. Hey, how was your day? I don't know what to do. Do you want to read something? Sounds good. What did you eat for lunch? So it's something that's in between. And I also think that the biggest barrier that we're encountering as humans right now obviously, is the fact that if you want to really understand what it's like to live in another language, I mean, not everyone has the means to just go and put themselves in another country, even for a short period of time. And so this virtually would allow people access in a way that could be fantastic, that could open up so many doors for so many people around the world.

 

Christina:

And especially, again, especially if we're talking about global languages, it's also allows you this access to

Not necessarily native speakers, but expert level speakers from different faces. So I mean, for me, it's just fascinating to a lot of people. I talked to a lot of people from Argentina. It is like, oh, right, it's a totally different Spanish from the Spanish that I speak. And that's quite interesting as well as a learner to have access to people from different places. And of course with the broader mission of let's get back to that fantasy of global community, figure out, it might just be a fantasy, but if in my small little context that my small little square foot that I stand on, if I can kind of get that to work, then that's great. That's what I can control. That's my agency. So yeah, that's what I'm trying to bring to the world. So that's where I'm at.

 

Michelle:

Yeah. Well, we will look forward to seeing it. The coolest part about this being in real time is we don't know what's happening yet. We get see happens.

 

Christina:

Well, we'll see if the world's still here by then.

 

Michelle:

Oh my God. Yeah.

 

Christina:

Don't talking about that. That's a whole other thing. That's a whole other thing. But I, I feel like there needs to be some sort of this podcast, it's like this was recorded on the blah, blah, blah day, right? Because that's the reality right now that these are true. It is evergreen in a certain sense, but evergreen, assuming that the world is going to remain somewhat familiar by May. I dunno.

 

Michelle:

Yeah. So this is February 7th, 2025 that we're recording If the world implodes before this episode airs or if it changes drastically. Yeah, I do think that that's some of the episodes I will mention when I've recorded, just because it's like we're talking about winter and I'm like, oh, by the time you episode records, it's going to be, yeah, we're talking about the holidays. But anyways, we'll look forward. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you.

 

Christina:

It's been such a pleasure, Michelle. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for everything that you are doing and bringing voices to this space. So thank you.