Having successfully passed my exams in all of my 3 preferred European languages, French, German and Spanish I needed to contemplate the future and decided that I wanted to move onto the next level of learning.
My mother had a friend whose daughter worked as an interpretor for the government and was earning quite a hefty monthly sum of money doing it.
I had never thought about becoming an interpretor and didn’t know anything about it other than the pay was good, so I thought this was definitely something I could look towards doing once I had reached a proficient level in the languages I was studying.
A few months prior to successfully passing my exams I had taken a part time job as I felt I needed to earn some money as I knew I would be studying for some time to come if was going to become an interpretor.
During the summer break from college I had picked up some extra shifts at the place I was working and I must admit the money at the time was very appealing to me being such a young age.
It got to the point where I was working full time and was beginning to go out on the evenings and at weekends with my friends, socialising and bit by bit losing interest in going back to college and furthering my education.
I also met a girl at work and I needed the money to be able to take her out on dates.
I made the biggest mistake of my life that summer, which was to stop studying and to take a full time job instead.
All that hard work and effort towards learning the previous year had now pailed into insignificance compared to the lure of having money in my back pocket.
Now at the age of 44 and married to the lady I met that summer with 5 kids my life couldn’t be better, but I must admit I do still look back with regret having not pursued my language learning when I was young.
I am still a keen language learning but now purely for pleasure.
I have tried lots of different ways to try and study in the limited time that I have available to me during the week but as you can appreciate working full time and having 5 children doesn’t leave me much time for extra-curricular activity.
I have used phone based language apps, online courses, paid for expensive 1 hr language learning sessions but studying at a higher level than I did at college and not having the support of other language learners around me or a dedicated tutor I could afford long term has meant my language learning has become stagnated and I now find that my language learning has all but stopped.
Despite my best efforts I have been unable to find an affordable language learning solution to meet my learning requirements.
This struggle towards language study as an adult has tested my patience a lot of recent years and im sure that there are an awful lot of people in exactly the same situation as me all over the world who are looking to improve their English language learning skills but find themselves with limited time, no real support, unsure of what they should be studying and how to improve from their current level to the next.
I have made it a goal of mine to put right for others what I have experienced myself hence the introduction of English Ace.