English With Kirsty

I believe that learning to be yourself, in your first or any other language, is a process! It's a life-long journey of self-discovery!But it's true that, when we're using additional languages, we sometimes don't show the full extent of who we are. Maybe we don't have the words or maybe we use strategies that make life easier in the short-term, but don't allow our unique personalities or ideas to shine.I'm talking about five of those strategies today. My clients use them, but I've used all of them too at some point. I explain why they can be a problem and what we can do to challenge ourselves to move past them.I also mention my mentoring programme - Discover your voice in English: https://englishwithkirsty.com/discover-your-voice-in-english Send me a message if you'd like to arrange a call where we can discuss whether the programme is what you're looking for so that you can discover and use your voice in English - effectively and in a way that feels natural.Do you have any language coping strategies that you w

If you've been following along with the 10 episodes on 10 forms that learning can take, you'll know that I'm creating them as part of the podcast's 10th birthday celebration.In July 2025, the English with Kirsty podcast will be 10 years old. A lot has happened since July 2015. I've learned a lot. I've changed a lot, both personally and professionally. In this episode, I'm sharing with you 10 of the things that I've learned along the way. Maybe you can relate to some of them. Maybe they'll encourage you to finally start that podcast/blog/YouTube channel, or to keep going with a project that you've started recently. Let me know if you've been in similar situations or if you'd like to share any of your learning experiences too.Also, if you're reading this before 10th July 2025, I'd like to invite you to the podcast's 10th birthday celebration, which will be an online event to celebrate the role of languages and learning in our lives.You'll meet new people, discover new podcasts, learn something new, and hopefull

 | I first discovered Kimberly Martinez from Bright translation on LinkedIn – where else! I signed up for her newsletter because I thought it would be useful for me to learn some new things about the translation industry and, after reading some of Kimberly’s posts on LinkedIn too, I thought she’d be an interesting guest for a conversation on the podcast.  We hadn’t spoken before our podcast conversation, so this was also our chance to get to know one another better.  We talked about:  

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I’m creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take. There will also be an online networking event for guests and listeners to come together on the podcast’s birthday in July 2025.Part five of the series is about the kind of practical learning that comes from taking action, saying “yes” to new opportunities, bringing about change in our life or business, or putting into practice skills that we’ve been learning.I brought back some of my good friends, Patrícia, Maria, and Marta,  whom you first met in an episode last year. We have all experienced change – whether that’s the career change that led to us starting our businesses, decisions to offer new services, ways to step out of our comfort zones and become more visible as business owners, or moving through the stages that bring life to new ideas.We talked about – among other things: Something that we have done that is new or that brought about change in our business Some

I wanted to give some more time to the topic of audio description so that we can explore it, both as an important way to make films, series, and live events accesible to visually impaired people, and as a new area of work for language professionals to explore.I got together with a group of language professionals from my network with different types of experience, different working languages (English, German, Italian, and Spanish), to talk about both the role of the audio description script writer and the voice artist.During our discussion, we covered topics such as: The guests’ stories and how they became involved with audio description The process of creating scrips and recording the voice-over tracks Challenges and points to consider when thinking about creating content in different languages Different types of information that the audience needs, depending on the type of content Training available for those interested in this kind of work The interaction between scrip writers, voice-over artists, and end u

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I’m creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take.There will also be an online networking event for guests and listeners to come together on the podcast’s birthday in July. Use the contact form further down if you want to be one of the first to receive more information about the event!Part four of the series is about how we can learn through business adventures – or intentional travel to help ourselves and our businesses.I decided to have a conversation with Jane Eggers about this because it’s something that we’ve both done recently. Actually she inspired me!Jane is a German to English translator who lives in /Germany. For the last 3 years, she’s been coming to England to attend the LinkedIn Live conference and meet up with business friends and contacts.I’m an English trainer who started off working only with German-speaking clients. This is no longer the case as my business has grown and evolved, but a lot of my work

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I'm creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take. There will also be an online networking event for guests and listeners to come together on the podcast's birthday in July. Part three of the series is about how we can learn through community. The first people who came to my mind to talk about community were Kelsey and Anikó  from Team Translator - and fortunately for us, they said "yes"!Whether you call yourself a freelancer, a business owner, a self-employed professional - community is so important for all of us working on our own.Kelsey Frick and Anikó Pető-Mordovski set up Team Translator to provide a community for those working in translation. We talked about what the community is, how it works, why it's important, and what Anikó  and Kelsey have learned through leading and being part of it. We also discussed the importance of building meaningful connections, LinkedIn strategies, the need to be yourself, and how

Accessible communication with Josélia NevesJosélia's name came up when I was doing some research about an upcoming episode on audio description. That episode is coming soon, but when I discovered all the other things that Josélia is doing, I decided it would be good to have a conversation with her on her own so that we could explore her work in more depth.We talked about:

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I’m creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take.Part two of the series is about how we can learn through events and I thought that talking about LocLunch events would be a really good way to explore this topic. I invited four LocLunch ambassadors: Patrícia from Loclunch Lisbon, Roberta from LocLunch Rome, Lisa from LocLunch Barcelona, and Magali from LocLunch Berlin.When you listen to our conversation you’ll discover: More about my guests – who they are and why they decided to become LocLunch ambassadors What happens at a LocLunch event How these events provide practical opportunities for support and learning for those involved in the localisation industry How the events in each city are developing their own identities based on who’s running and participating Some of the different forms the events can take and the practical ways in which they help people, both personally and professionally Some of the things that my

Today my guest is Tania from Tania Lines Translation & Writing Services. We met on LinkedIn recently and I thought that Tania would be an interesting podcast guest … so here she is!We talked about How Tania keeps all of her languages up-to-date – both her working languages and the additional ones that she wants to learn The idea of having one day dedicated to each additional language and how this looks practically Tania’s experience of moving to countries where she did not speak the language Language exchanges and my online language exchange meet-ups Facial expressions and how the correct position of your lips, teeth and jaw are also important if you want to produce the correct sounds Roxie the beagle and how Tania’s interest in dogs and cats has opened up a new area of specialisation for her How about you? If you speak more than one additional language, how do you try to ensure that you give enough attention to all of them?Find out more on the show notes page: https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/ep

To celebrate 10 years of the English with Kirsty podcast, I’m creating a 10-part series to celebrate 10 different forms that learning can take. This is part one!Today I’m talking with Alfonso González Bartolessis about learning via courses.When you listen to our conversation you’ll find out:

Our brain, emotions, and language learning with Alice Mansaud This week I have a returning guest on the podcast. Last time, Alice was part-way through some training, so she agreed to come back when she'd finished to share what she'd learned.We talked about

Last week I attended one of Marta Pagans’ workshops for freelancers. It was nothing to do with languauge learning, but I was interested in the event anyway and I was also glad to participate in some training where I used one of my other languages.I’m not going to talk about what I learned at the workshop – though you’ll be seeing some of the results of the actions that I decided to take as the year goes on.I do, however, want to share some of my reflections about using German, my first additional language, in a business training context.This is what I learned!Do you relate to any of these things?Visit the show notes page, find out more about my events, and get the link for Marta's page  here:https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode268/

Megan Miller is back on the podcast with me!   We recorded at the end of last week, so it’s still January and I wanted to offer something a bit different from the usual content that we hear at the beginning of a new year. We talked about: • How being too prescriptive about habits can steal our joy – language is important • How saying “no” and being intentional about what we really want can create space to start new things or give us more time for things that are really important to us • The importance of self-care and self-compassion as we think about how we want to allocate our time and energy resources. Figure out what works for you! • The importance of boundaries – with ourselves and others. • How life works in seasons. What kind of season are you in right now? Check out the show notes page here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/episode267/Or go back to episode 240 to listen to our first conversation.How has 2025 been for you so far?

For anyone who's listening in January 2025 - wishing you a year with interesting encounters, opportunities that help you to grow, and people who will support you along the way! If you have discovered the episode at a later date - have a wonderful day!You won't get one of the typical new year episodes from me about what you should be thinking/starting or doing differently. There's enough of that around and a lot of it lacks self-compassion. I think any time can be a good time to make a positive change. However, sometimes for us in the northern hemesphere, the middle of winter is not the best time to start pushing ourselves to do something radically different. Sometimes a gentler start to the new year is better. But I have been making changes here at English with Kirsty. Last year I posted about them on LinkedIn. I rewrote parts of my website and reorganised the pages. I changed how I approach my content creation so that I now concentrate on 7 main topics ... and I didn't talk about those here on the podcast.So

My "31 ways to improve your English" challenge is back again and we'll be starting on 1st January 2025!I don't believe that the beginning of a new year is the best time to start new things or bring about change! But it is true that our routines change throughout December and sometimes it's hard to get back into the habit of practising our additional language skills outside of the things that we need to do for work.Also, sometimes people want to learn new things, but they feel bored with what they're doing at the moment and want to change things up a bit.This is where my 31 ways to improve your English challenge comes in.Each day, you receive a new activity to develop some aspect of your language. If you're doing it to improve your English, you also have access to me to ask questions or get written feedback about any of your tasks.Find the show notes page here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode265/or sign up for the challenge here: https://englishwithkirsty.com/about-the-lessons/31days/The challeng

I met Dolores a few months ago at a networking event and since then I’ve been getting to know her better at my networking and language exchange events for language professionals.Dolores is also a podcaster – in fact that was one of our first topics. I thought it would be interesting to talk about Dolores work, her podcast, and why she decided to split it into two separate podcasts with content in both Spanish and English.We talked about: Dolores podcast and why she decided to have a podcast in English and one in Spanish How having a podcast helps Dolores to learn more and develop her speaking skills Why Dolores enjoys translating in the area of education Why we will never stop being language learners, however fluent we become How the role of people working in translation and localisation is changing Dolores’ advice for anyone who is thinking about starting a podcast. You can find all the links and further details on the show notes page:https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode264/

In this week's episode I'm talking about my new interactive workshop, which is all about the challenges that we can face as advanced language learners. We've got our language to a good level, but then, for whatever reason, we feel stuck and it's hard to move forward.We'll explore 5 challenges that you might be facing and what you can do to move past them.Talking about problems isn't fun, so I wanted to make it a bit more approachable and light-hearted. I also didn't want to make case studies with these 5 challenges in case anyone had the same name as the characters. So instead, we have 5 dogs. You can see the retriever in the picture here - she struggles with perfectionism. Does anyone relate to that? If you do, come along to the workshop!We also have 4 other dogs with different situations, so if you come, you'll discover whether you're more like the spaniel, the labrador, the German shepherd or the collie!Or maybe you'll have elements of more than one. As a language learner, I do!This is where you can find o

If you use access technology or have other accessibility requirements, you can’t just find a good language course and sign up for it! First you need to check out how accessible that course will be for you, how willing the course provider is to make any adaptions, and then you can make an informed decision about whether it’s going to be a good option to meet your needs.I’m a learner as well as a teacher and I have a lot to say about this too, but I thought it would be more interesting to have a discussion with one of my clients who also uses access technology.I’ve known Elisabeth for a number of years now. In fact, she was my second customer! We talked about: Elisabeth’s previous experiences of learning English Why Elisabeth wanted to find an online English course and what was important to her in terms of accessibility Why it’s important for designers of courses or learning materials to be aware of different accessibility requirements and to consider them from the beginning of the project What Elisabeth does t

Today I'm talking about some of the activities in which I've been participating in order to develop my language skills in a way that's relevant to work. Whether that was attending a Women in Localisation webinar in Portuguese, meeting a Toastmaster's group in Portugal, or planning future attendance at a workshop in German - all of these things are somehow work-related and at the same time, they help me to develop relevant, work-related vocabulary. I should add that I didn't need to look for these opportunities. all of the invitations came to me through my network. If you spend time getting to know people and building relationships, those people will probably invite you to things!I also talk about some other things you can do such as looking for industry-specific podcasts, publications, or social media accounts.Whether you're developing your passive listening skills at a webinar, participating in a workshop, or even going on a podcast in an additional language - all of these things can help you to grow and bec