How my Journey with Languages and Teaching Started
My name is Víctor Cruz a 32-year-old Mexican teacher whose been working on this profession for a little bit less than a decade now and with a big passion for it, languages have come easy for me and I could say that I have learned English self-taught since my interest came from a very familiar place for many people, music.
It was at a very young age that I discovered that I wanted to learn more languages even though I could not get instant access to another one, besides my mother tongue. In a way as a direct influence from my dad who has been a rock music fan since he was a little boy. He has enjoyed listening to the music of The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Queen and others with so much pleasure and the biggest thing is, he wasn’t even aware of what the songs were about to the point that he decided to write down what he thought the songs were saying with the spanish phonetics and, I get it, he was just trying to sing along with his favorites tunes.
This pathway to foreign music came along with my interest in languages. "What are they saying? What do they mean with their songs? Is there an actual purpose?" were some of the many questions I asked myself several times while I was growing up. Probably is not coming from the same aspect but it’s a similar interest as if you were learning Spanish to understand a movie, a mexican TV show or something like that.
Some years later I earn a scholarship and received my first ever English classes, I was so excited for it and those were exactly what I was expecting. I learned how to say fruits, family, numbers, the basic stuff but I was excited anyway and just in the moment that I found myself on the peak of my emotions, the course stopped. To this day I cannot recall why but the point is that it ended, but the seed was planted and I decided to go on my own. With the arrival of the internet I started to translate songs and share with my dad the meanings, I was around 12 at that time when I decided to continue.
I started with TV series, music and some books, because even though I got english classes at school they weren’t enough, I felt that there was no real progress which was very disappointing and it carried on like that until I was in college. One day the teacher said, if you don’t want to take the class just take the test to skip certify yourself and get the maximum grade in all of them and so I did, I did get the maximum grade in all the levels and I couldn’t believe it I was truly excited.
A few months later I talked to a friend and he told me that there’s was a job opportunity at work to be an english teacher and at first, I need to be honest, I did not want to take the job, mainly because I had not practiced that much my english with real people, besides my cousins, American born, but I overcame to the nervousness and went ahead to take the opportunity that has become one the best decisions I have made in my life.
At the beginning of my teaching I was not even able to express myself clearly nor connecting two sentences together and now that I think about, with 9 years of experience, it was disrespectful to the labor of a teacher to start that way although it is the reality for many languages teachers, you just throw yourself into and do your best. I do have a lot of experience now and I have become a professional perfectly capable of conducting a class, making progress with my students and achieving the goals they have set for themselves but at the moment it was a very difficult challenge.
My teaching experience can be a topic for another day but right now what I can tell is that I have taught basic English and Spanish lessons, advanced Spanish classes and even one-on-one spanish classes which I do consider to be the best possible way to learn a new language, with a private teacher.
Nowadays I speak English very fluently and I’m capable of understanding some German and some basic knowledge of Portuguese and French because my goal is to achieve at least five languages but none of that could be possible without technology, I can watch TV shows in other languages, listen to music, use translators but still, the best possible way to learn is with a professional in a one on one class and even better if it is with a native, on your schedule, with your computer, wow, these blessed days we are living.
Anyway, I just wanted to let you know a little bit about how my journey with languages and teaching started and how it evolved into the career I have forged over the last nine years during which I’ve collected anecdotes, experiences, and friendship. But as I said, those are stories for another day. Thanks for reading and see you next time.
