15 years ago, I was stuck.
I had taken a couple of beginner Spanish classes in school. Did my due diligence, aced the quizzes, but still froze in the face of an actual Spanish conversation.
And I had absolutely no idea why.
Formal classes were boring (and my grades sucked). Rosetta Stone was expensive (like, $500 at the time). I tried free resources like Duolingo and Livemocha (RIP), but I was just learning "the apple is red" over and over again, before quitting again.
So I turned to the internet, where I found approximately 9,000 more resources all saying the exact same thing:
learn a language! get fluent like a native! speak a language in 30 days!
Suffice to say, I was lost. I didn’t know where to look.
…but everyone and their mother was fluent in so many languages!
Just buy the thing. Trust the process. Clearly you're not trying hard enough.
So I bought their apps. I read their books. I still have'em gathering dust on a shelf.
Once I finished college, the first thing I did was move abroad. Spain was the obvious choice, so I moved to Madrid to teach English for a year. I spent that time throwing myself into Spanish every way I could: language schools, exchanges with locals, private tutors, anything I could possibly think of. I was literally living in Spain. I had zero excuses!
So tell me why I still wasn't a fully bilingual woman a year later?! Still couldn't stick to it. Still froze in conversations. Still had no idea what I was doing wrong.
Immersing myself in Spain did teach me something important, though: yes these strategies work, but it's not quite the way they make it seem online.
So I started writing my own language app reviews.
I actually used the apps. I studied them objectively, turned it into a science.
And here's what I noticed pretty fast: every review out there said basically the same thing: some vague promise of "this app will change your life", with a convenient affiliate link at the bottom.
Nah, they were written to get you to click a Temu-priced link. Nobody was saying "this one is great if you learn visually" or "skip this one if you need structure." Just: here's a product, here's a discount code, good luck.
When I actually sat down and used these apps myself, I recognized patterns. Some focused on tapping buttons, some threw you directly into speaking without any prep, and some aggressively hold your hand through so many repetitions I wanted to cry. Different goals. Different learning styles. Different levels of chaos tolerance. Different brains.
So I said that. I talked about (and showed) how Rocket Languages is excellent at giving you the same content 32 different ways, and how Rosetta Stone will get you speaking but it'll break your brain (in a good way though).
Then people started emailing me. Stuck language learners sending me lists of every app they've bought and abandoned, every reason they were convinced they were just bad at this. I hadn't even intentionally put out my email address, but they were there, asking me which app to try next.
Wrong question.
I emailed them back, telling them they were strangers to me and there was no way for me to give them a better answer than a random internet polyglot...but I guess I could try?
Those emails became my first coaching clients.
They mirrored back to me all these feelings I had had for so many years, that I thought I was totally alone in because I hadn't seen anyone else say these words:
"I want to stay consistent but I'm lazy"
"I tried this app for a little bit, but it didn't feel right so I switched to this one"
"I can't make myself try hard enough, I just procrastinate after work"
The exhausting depression of throwing everything you have into a huge, exciting goal, just for all that motivation to fizzle out the next week. And then a couple hours later you see your fave polyglot post their weekly wins. Guess it's just a you problem lol !
I talked to these internet strangers (the ones who emailed me), and I was weirdly good at helping them. And I loved it. For all those times that language learning just didn't *click* in my brain, coaching these stuck language learners made up for all that pain.
Values
“If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?” – Hamilton
1
Transparency
I won't give you word salad that sounds good but means nothing. My brand of autism means that I can't lie/use ~flowery~ language to make things sound better. Not won't, literally can't.
2
Sustainability
I'm not interested in strategies that only work when Mercury isn't in retrograde or whatever. If you don't know when or if something's gonna work, it doesn't.
3
Equity
Listen, life is hard enough without having to "prove" that you've "earned" fun things. Language learning can be an easy and enjoyable hobby, let's make it so by actually supporting people.
4
Consent
If it's not a "fuck yes", it's a no. I promise that whatever it is that's not working for you, we can change it without you doing it wrong. If you're not into something, don't do it!
A few fun facts about me as a human
📍I grew up in small town Florida, USA. I moved to Tampa to study Anthropology in college (my undiagnosed autistic ass needed college professors to explain people to me), met my now husband, and the rest is history!
Some of my hobbies include going for long walks, taking spin classes, and sitting in my cold, dark, bedroom with ocean sounds playing and nobody bothering me.
I'm a cishet in a heteronormative (albeit biracial) marriage, but I try to be a decent ally to my queer, multicultural, and otherwise "not normal" friends. Except the neurodiverse...I am one of those.
