Almost 200 pages read in a weekend!!

Wow!! I’m really excited! This weekend I went, with my wife and my two kids (they’re 19 month old twins), to my parents-in-law’s second home in Empordà area (it’s two hours driving from Barcelona). The idea was to be able to have a bit of rest (you know, grandparents help with the children) and also to work a little. So I brought my laptop but.... Oh no! In the rush preparing things to leave, I forgot my pendrive with all my work in my desktop!!! So what did I do? Well, fortunately I had the book I’m currently reading, and also my iPhone with the audiobook version: Deception Point, by Dan Brown.
Oh my God, I can’t remember reading/listening so much in just two days!!!
Friday afternoon, when we left Barcelona, I was on page 154. I was on the page 340 when we came back home on Sunday night. So altogether almost 200 pages read in English and also almost 8 hours of audiobook listening!! I’m really happy!!! And I’ve discovered that reading while listening is really fantastic!!!!

The revival of learning

Here am I! After some months of inactivity, I've decided to restart my blog.

I've changed the title and the description and I'm ready to fill it up with my new English learning experiences.

Let's start by the beginning! When I finished my degree in Translation and Interpreting I started to work as a general freelance translator. Then I specialized in localization (that is, software and web content translation and adaptation). So I've been working with this for the last 8 years (a part from also proofreading and translating Spanish <-> Catalan). Reading and translating, reading and translating...

So guess what happenned? My speaking skills get worse and worse and really worse. I also forgot a lot of basic, everyday's vocabulary because I just read technical English.

A couple of years ago I met a couple of german friends of a friend of mine and I didn't feel confortable and a bit embarrassed when I told them that I was a translator... Yes, I know, it's strange, I'm not really fluent in speaking, but you know, I just read and read those boring technical manuals.... Oh my God, what a disaster!!

But the real change in my mind happened last autumn, when I decided that I wanted to be a High School English teacher here in Barcelona. I love to teach and I know that the English level of the students here is reeeally bad, but doing my CAP course (Pedagogical Aptitude Course) I had a worderful, optimistic and full of energy teacher that transmitted me some of that energy.

I did my Practicum in a high school and it was fine! As I just told you, the level here is really low in general, but I realized that if I want to be a teacher, I don't want to be the kind of teachers I've always had in my school time... you know, those teacher that used to use more Spanish/Catalan in classes than Englih, who just used boring textbooks, the traditional grammar approach and this kind of stuff!!

So I realized that I needed to be more fluent to feel selfconfident and being able to manage a classroom just in English!!

What was my first step? I went to Ireland just to broke the ice and start talking and feel that I was able to do it!!

Take a break, I'll continue tomorrow....