I think that was enough “hello” to make the moon shine :). I’m new here to the eduFire world and I thought I’d introduce myself!

I was born in Newcastle, Australia and spent most of my life there. I moved to Sydney to study, then fled to Germany a year later and somehow eventually found myself in my current location: Berlin :)

Teaching experience?
I’ve been tutoring privately since my last two years of high school (in Australia we don’t have middle school) up until the present day, mostly to English native speakers. In 2008 however, I decided to acquire a TEFL certification which led me to CELTA and taking the course for it at the Berlin School of English. Since then, I’ve been teaching still mostly private students, but now focussing more on non-native speakers.

I’m currently applying to study again in Germany, in Berlin hopefully… but right now I’m dealing with the shifty German bureaucracy – there should be a class for it, for foreign students, I tell ya…

My experiences as a learner?
I’m a native English and Ibaloi speaker, so those two are out of the question for me. I learned German for a relatively short time – since March 2007, however I now speak it fluently. What’s my secret? Well… I don’t have one, immersion. Read: in eastern Germany (with the exception of Berlin), there’s not much English spoken.
I’m currently learning French, Spanish, Russian and Korean… for the first two, I’m intermediate level and beginner in Russian and Korean.
I’ve got something of a habit of trying to shove more languages than necessary down my throat at once – having also at one time or another Chinese, Arabic and Esperanto.
In sum: I know what it’s like to be learning a foreign language and I enjoy it!

I guess you could say that what really led me to teaching, is my passion for languages and cultures.
I’m looking forward to getting to know you all!

Liebe Grüße,
Natasha

Okay… before this stretches into eternity, I’ll end my sentence precisely here.

welcome to edufire natasha

Enjoy staying here Nat as an edufirian!

Hi Natasha!

Welcome to eduFire. Great to see you in the forums. Your intro is great; I really enjoyed reading your teaching/student experiences. Have fun!

Hey Natasha, and welcome to eduFire. :) Your ambition is inspiring. Haha, I hope that wasn’t too corny, but it’s true! Hopefully eduFire can meet all of your teaching and learning desires and needs!

Good luck with getting into a school in Germany. :)

Hallo, Natasha. Vielleicht wir konnen sprechen? Ich lerne deutsch aber, ich finde das sehr schwer ist der grammatik. ich glaube das der Satz ist richtig.

Welcome, Natasha! Great intro post :) I agree with Scott — your ambition is very inspiring!

Hi Natasha, welcome to the edufire community….great to have you here!

Hi Natasha! It is great to have you and I enjoyed reading your introduction :) Please do sign up for the orientation classes for new teachers. register here They teach you how to use the platform and much more! If you need any help, please let me know.

Welcome to eduFire Natasha! I am blown away at the number of languages you have and are studying! That is fantastic! How do you keep them all straight?

Hallo, Natasha! Willkommen! ;) Good luck with all you wish to pursue!

Waaa, replies :). I have now signed up for the orientation class, two of them in fact, and so hopefully I’ll be able to make at least one of them (at the moment my schedule is all over the place). Christina, to answer your question – I find learning them together, comparatively to be a great help. For instance, if I can remember at least 2 of the terms in 2/4 of the languages, the sounds of those two terms are usually enough to bring back to memory the terms in the other two language. I suppose it would be a different case, if one were to try to learn Spanish and Italian at the same time, from the beginning, whereas I started learning the four languages all at different times…. though I would say that once you’ve learnt a few languages, the others become easier – one develops a natural system for language structural learning, perhaps?