Thank you for taking your time to look at my profile.
My name is KAYOKO, and I'm a Spanish language tutor and a junior high/middle school English language teacher.
Come to think of it, it has been a quarter of a century since I left Japan. 1 year in the United Kingdom, 22 years in Mexico, and 2 years in the United States.
You probably think that I'd be fluent in both English and Spanish. I do think that I'm now "very fluent" in Spanish myself. However, it was quite a difficult journey, and I am still learning.
I'm sure that I will continue on learning like this until the day I die...
Your language skills don’t improve that much just by living in that country.
I've lived with a Mexican family, so daily conversation quickly became less of an issue for me.
However, the part that came after this was the hard part of learning Spanish. I learned English in college so at first, I somehow got away by translating English into Spanish. But of course, that would mean that I would never improve my Spanish by doing this.
I noticed that the more I read in Spanish, the more I wrote in Spanish, and the more I listened to Spanish, my Spanish language skills improved.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that broken English or Spanish is bad.
The essential part of communication is to accurately understand what the other person is saying, and to also accurately explain your thoughts to the other person.
It doesn’t matter if your grammar is slightly off, or if your pronunciation is slightly bad, since you aren’t going to be a fluent speaker from the very beginning of your learning.
I started using Spanish every day.
Spanish will always be a foreign language for me (I still make mistakes), but I find myself wanting to speak it correctly and beautifully, and to challenge myself to see how far I can go in learning this language.
Wouldn’t you like to join me and study these fascinating languages?
【My Brief Personal History】
After graduating from an university’s English department, I started my working career at a manufacturer.
After two years of working, I went to the UK to study for a year. Once I returned to Japan, I started working as an English teacher and curriculum advisor at a major language school.
After getting married, I moved to Mexico. While working as a housewife, I occasionally worked as a Spanish translator as well as doing proofreading. At the same time, I worked as a tutor for about 10 years, teaching English to junior high/middle school students at a Japanese school in Mexico.
From 2015 onwards, I have been working full-time as a freelance Spanish industrial interpreter. I'm currently exploring ways to balance this work with housework.
【Things I Enjoy】
Reading, writing, eating sweet things, smalltalk, learning new languages, traveling, window shopping, etc.
【 Cafetalk Translation / April 2020 】
Please note that this profile has been translated by Cafetalk for easier understanding.
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