Teaching English to 550K Followers: From ZERO English to Teaching Success @dlanguages

hey everyone it's Hadar today I am happy to share with you an interview I held with Mariana from D languages Mariana speaks four languages Romanian Russian English and Spanish she teaches English in Spanish and she has the most incredible story in the interview you will hear about how she had to move to Spain at the age of 16 and learn two languages at the same time and she's going to tell you how she did it and what helped her succeed she's also going to share with you her journey as a teacher from a student and

what she does today and how she helps thousands of her students I cannot wait to share with you this inspiring and funny and incredible story so let's watch the interview hi Mariana hello hello how's it going I'm good so happy to have you here me too thank you thank you so much for um just inviting me and and showing interest in my story because your story is interesting and I cannot wait for my audience to get to know you and hear your story because I think it's so inspiring and um energizing so thank you for

those who don't know you what do you say when people ask you to introduce yourself that's a good question so well I started with my name which is Mariana pleshko and um yeah I'm originally from Moldova Moldova is the tiny I I usually explain where Moldova is because people do usually don't know uh so it's Moldova it's a tiny country in the Eastern Europe between Ukraine and Romania I was born there and lived there until I was 16 years old and then I moved to Spain so I lived there for 15 years 15 years and

just for people who don't know what language is spoken in Moldova that's right so um my mother Tong is Romanian this is the language that we speak there that's the official language of Moldova and I also speak Russian because Russian is a ex-soviet an ex-soviet country so growing up the TV was all in Russian uh dubbed in Russian and so I learned Russian by watching TV and uh yeah so I speak Romanian Russian so the two languages that you grew up in basically are actually not the languages that you use today to speak live and

teach not at all okay funny enough those two languages Russian and Romanian are not similar at all like they have nothing to do with each other you know the the alphabet the spelling the sounds are so different so yeah Romanian is a Latin language and Russian is I don't know like a Slavic Slavic language so um yeah when I moved to Spain I learned Spanish and English at the same time so I I speak Spanish and English and these are two languages that I use right now so Spanish um Romanian and Russian I barely use

them I speak you know sometimes with my family from Moscow I use Russian it's a little bit Rusty I must say okay yeah because it's it's you know it's cool to know I understand it 100 uh now when it comes to speaking I need a little bit of time to just remember the words um so I speak Romanian with my mom but it's not a clean Romanian you know uh it's it's like a mix between Romanian Russian Spanish you know it's absolutely crazy people would not understand us you know so we we have like um

our own language you know I love it it's it's great that's the beauty of knowing so many languages and you just mix them up people that are you know affluent in many languages I'm sure they do exactly the same thing they they know it yeah and I think that when they try to recollect a word from one language then that like probably a word from a different language comes up for sure for sure and it's funny because when we speak with our family from Moldova we use sometimes a word in Spanish and we don't even

realize it and they're like uh what is that you know it's like I don't know that word I yeah like so I was like okay how do I say that because we keep using the same words in Spanish you know yeah so um so just to get it straight so at the age of 16 you moved to Spain that's right and until that age were you have you learned Spanish or English no I did not learn Spanish at all so when I moved to Spain I did not speak Spanish at all I was my level

was zero and English I I learned English at school you know the basics grammar and the verb to be and you know yeah ing exactly that's right that's right so the basics so I was not really fluent I was I was not able to communicate um my thoughts clearly in English but I knew something I I was able to to say something in English you know Spanish I was not able to say anything you know and I'm assuming that in Spain most people don't even speak English like back then when you move exactly yeah like

yeah you needed Spanish to I needed Spanish I needed Spanish so you know what the funny thing was that when I moved to Spain literally the next day my parents sent me to school so I was not speaking Spanish I went to Spanish school like in Spanish yeah yeah everything was in Spanish it was like you know like going now to China and and [Music] um speak Chinese figure it out yeah figure it out it was it was the first day I it was so stressful you know it's like you know when you try to

teach a baby how to swim you just like you know throw it into the swimming pool it's necessarily a good idea not necessarily a good idea yes I mean I had no choice yeah yeah I literally learned Spanish like the basics in three months so that was great how do you manage okay as a teenager at the age of 16 so on one hand you feel like okay all this incredible change like moving from one country to another then you need to acquire the language you need you want to make friends because you have to

also be you want to be socially accepted for sure um what did you do how did you manage to learn it so quickly so the advantage of um of uh knowing Romanian so Romanian and Spanish are Latin languages so there were words there are words that are very similar so I was trying to understand I was able to understand some things because they resonated with me because Romanian was very simple like for example Mesa it's it's table and Masa it's it's table in Romanian so Mesa it's in Spanish it's in you know in Romanian so

some words were very similar and I was able to to understand put them together it was more intuition you know so I was basing my my um my understanding on the intuition many times I'd fail you know many times I was like okay I have no I didn't understand that properly properly um sometimes that makes silly mistakes people would love but not because you know they would bully me or anything it was just it was is just honestly funny you know so yeah they found it funny and and this is how you learn so I

learned from my mistakes so quickly you know and I am adopted this mentality of okay this is not my language this is not my mother tongue I am learning it's okay to make mistakes it's fine let's have fun with it you know yeah so it was stressful frustrating super frustrating because you felt like you were you're dumb you're not able to express anything and you have so many things to say and you feel like you have a lock here you know what I'm saying and you're not able to to to say anything you're not able

to and then and then when someone asks you a question the questions were like oh my God please don't ask me any questions please don't don't ask me any questions because it's like it's you feel scared of not understanding the question and then looking ridiculous you know and then asking to repeat you know like to repeat themselves is like oh my God it's like asking for such a huge favor you know which is really not like this is definitely something that inhibits people now as you know uh language Partners or conversation Partners we know that

if someone asks us to repeat ourselves not a big deal but okay but when you are we don't know how to ask for help you know so I think this is something that was um that having that experience I'm sure that has taught you about your now students experience which will help you yeah I also want to mention I think we're gonna get like gonna go through your story and go back and forth between you know the story and your teaching or your philosophy about sure because it seems like okay so you use the word

intuition which I love I always talk about intuition when I uh talk about teaching because you gotta at some point it's not going to be clear and you just have to trust the work that you've done or trust your knowledge or trust your understanding to be able to continue in a conversation so I love that I also think that a word that came to my mind was resourceful it felt like you were very resourceful you were just figuring things out and you made it work no matter what like you could have said I'm not going

to school I know stories of people who immigrated and their kids said I'm not going to school because they were so afraid so you could have said that but you said no I'm gonna figure this out I'm gonna make it work and and the fact that you kept going whether if it was in school or in a conversation made it possible for you to see that progress in such a short time of course you were very immersed in it and the the similarities in the language for sure yeah what what did you take from that

experience to what is now your teaching so where I'm coming from you don't have an option of not doing you know so that's the mentality so when you don't give yourself an option of no you know no is not an option you just have to do it you know so this is what I always tell my students just don't give yourself an option of not learning English you know you have to do it there is no alternative no alternative in Spanish we say C or C yes or yes like there's no no option you know

so um not going to school was not an option for me not not learning Spanish was not an option for me and not learning English was also not an option for me you know because I didn't need to learn English living in Spain it was just a passion and a dream of mine you know but I didn't give myself an option of not doing it so tell me more about that how did you manage everything so yeah so Spanish was a necessity really I needed to survive that's why I learned it and I was very

lucky because at school one of my classmates was English she was from England so I was able to communicate with my broken English with her at least at the beginning and um and yeah so because of her I was able to practice my English learning Spanish at the same time and and then um at home I was just you know I I basically listen to things in English watched everything in English it was like Spanish and English so I worked a lot with movies so I always loved movies and I was watching those movies uh

that I grew up with you know the I don't know like home alone and those movies I watched them in um in in Russian right so everything was dubbed in Russian so since I already knew those movies like by heart and you know the dialogue by heart I would watch the same movie in English and then the same movie in Spanish you know so I was like oh so this is this is in Russian okay so this is how you say it in Spanish ah and this is how you say it in English so good

yeah very smart yeah so you just you work with things that you're familiar with you know or books that I I'd read for example Harry Potter right so I read the first book in in Romanian I was very familiar with that I loved it and then I'd read the same book in Spanish and then listen book in English you know what I'm saying it's a lot of work you know you it's a lot of work you need it seemed like you were very passionate about it exactly it's it's you have to put in the work

you know it's not going to happen overnight it's not going to happen there's no magic you know pill there's no magic in it you just have to work exactly yeah and so this is what I would do so I am outside home I you know surrounded by Spanish speaking people uh at school I had to to study the subject the all the subjects in Spanish but at home I created an English environment right so if I was in the kitchen in the background I'd have something on on the computer you know like a video or

something a movie whatever spoken English you know so my ear get used in Loops probably you repeated a lot of the same content sure yes like the same thing so you know not just like a video uh worked with it for a few minutes and then continued to the next one you know no I worked with the same one so yeah the more I listened to it the more things I I was able to understand and um yeah so it was like that and then I would read in English I would uh chat with people

on Facebook so I would joined this random groups about topics that would I was interested in and uh I was interested in Fitness and you know uh eating healthy and all that stuff so I met a girl from Estonia who lived she's she's my friend now who lives in Ireland so she speaks Russian and English so I would chat with her in English and then if there was something that I didn't know I would ask her in Russian you know so it's just like just like that so for someone listening to your story and I'm

trying to kind of like collect all the things that you said that you did um so here are a few things that you mentioned just to summarize up until this point uh one of the things that helped you was to watch a movie that you knew that was maybe previously dubbed in in Russian in your case for other people especially in countries where TV is dubbed or movies are dubbed then in your first language so you know the content and you know the dialogue than to watch it in your target language in our case probably

English yeah so that you're not struggling to understand the story but you pay attention to the content and then to probably watch it over and over and over again and not just try to go through as many pieces of content or movies as possible but to really focus on something that allows you to go deeper that's right so that's why you have to work with something that you you love you know a book that you absolutely love um a movie that you you adore that you don't mind watching it over and over yeah yeah it

has to be fun this is also critical yeah and immerse yourself right like you said you surround yourself with English it was always in the background so people who are not immersed in English this could help because it for sure obviously absolutely I lived in Spain right so I learned English in Spain and I haven't I haven't been to any English-speaking country up until 2019 and I've been uh I've been thank you I have been uh teaching English since 2011. okay so it was like I learned English living in Spain and in Spain you know

English is not their mother tongue right yeah so it's it doesn't matter where you are in the world right now with technology it's so much easier to emerge yourself in the in the language you just create your environment at home you know the English environment at home and learn and you know what here in in the United States there are so many people that live here but don't speak English because they surround themselves with people that speak Spanish in in this case you you know so yes most of my students are from Latin America are

Spanish speakers and uh yeah they've been living here for 30 years 20 years and and they don't speak English because they don't surround themselves with English-speaking people you know so it doesn't matter if you live in a country where English is spoken I just had a student yesterday in one of my coaching sessions and this is exactly what he said he said I live in Florida but it doesn't mean anything because most of my life I've lived in a Spanish-speaking Community which makes it challenging so you gotta find solutions to allow yourself to communicate and

it doesn't have to be physical like you can definitely find Solutions online and your story and many many other stories of people who were able to achieve fluency despite the fact that they never visited an English-speaking country or never had uh you know friends to speak with you can find Solutions it's all about resourcefulness and you are the example for that like you find Partners so it's really good for people to see that it is possible absolutely and if there is nobody you can talk with just talk with yourself because I was talking with myself

all the time you know it's just you have to you know that's another good tip like talk to yourself can you tell us can you tell us how you did it yeah so for example I would name the things that I that I'd see or things that I was doing so if I was cooking you know and I was peeling a potato I would ask myself how would I say peeling a potato in English or in Spanish you know what I'm saying because it was at the same time right so just um question yourself if

you see a person walking the dog right outside your window how would you say in English walk the dog you know so like ask yourself in your mother tongue how do I say this in English how would I say that in English um name the things that you see name the things that you are doing um question yourself like for example if you're writing something in your schedule or your diary how would I say that in English you know so this way it's so much easier right now because you have a translator is online translators

you can find the answer immediately you know you can check your uh your mistakes you know you can correct your mistakes I always tell my students this uh say the sentence in English the way you think uh it's it's correct right then type that sentence in Spanish in the translator the translator will translate it into English and then you check the sentence of the you know the translator and your sentence and you can correct yourself you know yep so it's so much easier right now too it is to communicate you know to to speak in

English by yourself yeah okay this is really really good what else did you do like is there another uh uh tip or trick that you can teach us that you use to learn Spanish and English yeah what else um so in terms of pronunciation the pronunciation is really important and uh I would listen to songs and I would repeat them right so I would sing along not to learn words or to learn um expressions or anything because you know the the lyrics of the songs in my in my opinion are so much different from the

spoken English so I never recommend uh my students to focus on the on on the chat you know the lyrics of the songs because it's it's sometimes it's you know it's not the spoken version of of English but um but when you listen to songs and repeat sing along your pronunciation improves you know so I was improving my pronunciation like this I just listened to the song and I was trying to copy the uh the singer exactly the same way the exact same tone this is one way uh I was improving my pronunciation then another

way I was just listening to audios and uh um applying the shadowing technique the shadowing technique is for those people that don't know is uh basically copying the native speaker um exactly like the tone the pauses the in the the the exactly the pronunciation everything everything you hear just Shadow you just copy that person so I would just work the same uh tongue twisters I would just say tongue twisters in English instead a lot of tongue posters yeah they're fun okay amazing so moving on moving along to the moment you said I love English so

much I want to teach it or maybe it was just like a random decision that ended up changing your life what was it like it was it was a random it was not even a decision it was just like it popped in my life popped into my life and it's like okay I I have to do it so everything started when I moved to Madrid so when I moved to Spain I was living in a tiny village in the east of Spain so I was living with my parents and then I moved to to Madrid

when I was 18. and I convinced my parents to pay for my rent and my food until I I found a job and I was uh I was studying I was finishing my high school uh and uh I was struggling wait wait wait wait wait so you moved to Madrid on your own before you even finished high school exactly before school yeah because um when I moved to Spain my Spanish was not good so I lost one year because they they basically uh put me into a lower grade so I lost one year and I

had so I was 18 but I didn't finish High School I didn't and also I took a gap year yeah I was in a on a gap year as well and uh yeah to learn Spanish and English to to improve these two languages so basically I was a little bit behind I was determined to I was determined to to finish high school so I went to Madrid to finish high school and also just to start my life you know and um I was I was struggling because um I couldn't find a job so I was

looking for a job I was 18 nobody was hiring you have no experience you know the the same crap and um I was living on 50 euros a month because the lady who um who I was renting from uh increased the the rent out of the blue and yeah so basically that left me uh with 50 euros a month for food so I was like I was desperate and I could not ask my parents for more money because they would have told me come back we don't have more money you know and going back for

me was not an option because I did not like living in that Village it was too tidy so one day I was on my way to the bank to you know to take up money for rent and then my bank disappeared it was just gone you know so I was like okay what is going on I just it was because they were like uh emerging the banks in Madrid at that point you know yeah so suddenly my bank was gone and instead of it there was like a shoe store I'm like what the heck where's

my bag you know and then I could not go to a different bank because they would um charge me you know like uh the fees so I could not afford it exactly yeah I needed that bank specifically so I was walking down the street and I saw a girl smoking I approached her and I asked I asked her can you please tell me where I can find this in this bank and uh she says like I have no idea but if you want I can Google it for you that was in 2011. and so Google

was around and uh so uh I was super happy it's like yes of course please yeah you do me a great favor so we went inside she was a receptionist and while she was looking searching for that bank I was looking around and I saw different doors many doors on each door there was a a name of a scientist like um Einstein Newton I was like this place so I turned around and asked her can you please tell me what what this is you know he's like oh it's an academy so what do you teach

here well we teach different languages we teach math we teach history you know all these like subjects for school like support for uh students that that need help all like okay languages I heard languages so so do you teach Russian I was like no no we don't teach Russian but we do teach English and we just had a marketing campaign and we have a lot of students and we're looking for 50 new teachers English teachers oh my goodness I like foreign do you speak English and I was like I had three seconds to answer that

question is like sure C or C right sure I was starving I I I needed wow I needed a job you know so I was like yeah sure yes I speak so she was like would you like to uh come to an interview wow like yes okay I was like yes okay and and she was like all right great so I would need this document this information is her so she gave me the information of the bank she found the bank I went to the bank got my money went home paid the landlord got the

documents she needed went back uh uh left and left all those documents there gave the documents and then a few days later she Colby and uh invited me to an interview I was like what am I doing what am I doing I don't speak English well enough to to to teach it you know and um and I was like okay so they will probably test my English and they will find out that I'm I was Cam and and I don't really speak English and then it's like okay well what can what worse what's the worst

that can happen right and then I went yeah and then it was not an interview at all you go there because it was such a shitty you know Academy they didn't care I just wanted you to know yes no maybe they did not care if you spoke English or not they believed you you know what I'm saying so it was great for me not so good for the students you know and uh that was my window basically this is how I started teaching English so the interview was basically okay so this is how we do

it here you go to students uh houses you have to prepare the classes and then you have a paper you sign here you make the students sign it here you um write down how many hours you taught that day and then at the end of the month we're going to give you cat your money in cash you know so there's not a bank transfer or anything so it was like couldn't could not be better yes I'm like oh my goodness I cannot believe it you know so um first class I went I was super nervous

the first class was a complete disaster disaster because the student knew more English than me so it was like okay I have to get my things together you know like I get to I have to prepare like real Empress so I started Googling I started investigating and researching right like how to prepare a class and uh I was like okay I'm an actor right I have to act like an English teacher get into the character like really really you know okay so that was literally my first acting job uh and um and then I yeah

I was going to hold to school right so at school I was I was studying English as well because that's one of the the subjects that you have to um you have to to study so I was like okay I'm going to use my school book right so I'm going to use the the text that I've already studied in class with my English teacher I already know what it is about uh I already know the answer to the to the exercises related to the text so I'm going to work with that I've always had a

good pronunciation so that kind of saved me because you know when you have a good pronunciation uh you give the impression that your English is amazing even though it's not true you know so I was able to yeah get by mm-hmm yeah and I I think this is such a good point first because yes this is why um I think a lot of people want in pronunciation because they know that they know that because when they listen to others this is what they feel but at the same time and I'm sure you have felt that

this is where it could create the Imposter syndrome or kind of like trigger it because you know that people expect of you to be at a certain level and then they would they might question for sure every single mistake that you make and yeah so as a non-native speaker you're constantly wrapped up with those thoughts about how you're perceived what you are doing how you're doing it how you're performing I think this is something that a lot of people exp a lot of none native speaking teachers experience and that was how how many years ago

that was that was 12 years ago 12 years ago a long time ago a long time ago yeah yeah a long time ago so it's it's so the pronunciation is important because you know it gives you that right Prestige right it gives you the image of sounding good um but yeah it's uh definitely I I had the Imposter syndrome for a long time you know sometimes I think he States this is the reality is that this is not my mother tongue you know I speak it well I think well enough to teach it right now

and um and just because you speak a language it doesn't matter that you're no you know how to teach it I speak Spanish Russian and Romanian and I have no idea how to teach those languages like yeah it's it's there's no way I can teach them I know how to speak them you know but I don't know how to explain to you how to use a certain tense I don't know what's the difference between one word and the other you know yeah yeah so it's so important to know how to facilitate being a native speaker

doesn't automatically make you a good teacher absolutely not yeah and one more thing and I think you know and I read somewhere in in an article that was published uh recently we'll also link to it it's on your Instagram account and you said that uh fifty percent of your teaching is teaching English and fifty percent is helping your students build confidence can you speak more about that and how your past has created that belief in you or philosophy teaching Philosophy for sure so um as years went by and I gained more experience and more knowledge

uh because when I really learned English it was by teaching because I had to prepare those classes right so I had to I had to really memorize everything that I didn't know I really had to like I spend hours and hours preparing for classes to teach them later you know and and repeat right so repetition so I would use the same class with one student and then would be another student with the other student and another and another so so repetition was the key and then um what I found out was that many students had

a really good level but their confidence sucked they were not confident you know so that's how I found out that 50 of my work as a teacher was to to uh make them confident to to um help them believe in themselves believe that the knowledge that they have the English that they have right now the level that they have right now is enough to communicate you know to get rid of the fears because there's fear you know um and fear of making mistakes it's like oh my God it has to be perfect it's like no

native speakers make mistakes all the time like there's people there's so many people there is is not correct you know but yeah it's infused all the time and it's okay and here's the thing like yes native speakers make mistakes all the time but also if you do make a mistake so what like what's the worst thing that could happen going back to that question you asked what would that mean would that really make you less intelligent less proficient less less competent no it just makes you a non-native speaker human human exactly you know just that

it doesn't it doesn't mean anything really you know we make mistakes constantly and I think we have to have fun with that just have fun with it and have to take ourselves too seriously seriously yeah and and I agree and I think that unless you unless you give yourself that permission to make mistakes uh you will not be able to feel free because you'll constantly monitor yourself you'll be on the outside checking that every single word you say is perfect like I could you know I make mistakes all the time when I speak freely because

I don't monitor my speech and I'm okay with that because I value that energy that comes out and expressing my thoughts and feelings and emotions and connecting with a person and being at the moment and being in the moment being attentive listening not thinking about myself but thinking about you right now as we're speaking and I know that's the mistakes is the price that I pay or being here with you and I'm sure like this is what I try to teach my students as well that they have to change their mindset and I know that

you do that as well um they have to change their mindset to be able to make that shift because when you give yourself permission you find Freedom so can you talk to me more about that as well and how you communicate that to your students yeah absolutely so it's um I always encourage them to make mistakes and and have and be happy to make those mistakes because that's that's the way to learn that is really the only way to learn how else are you going to learn yeah you know it's it's trial and error you

know and this is how everything works you know like we were not born experts in anything so we needed to to to make mistakes in order to learn so um I always um try to make them feel comfortable and and give them the most a positive and happy energy I want them to I I'm always trying and my objective is always to make them feel good and feel comfortable with me yeah you know you have to feel safe safe and not judge judgment judgmental you know like I I never judge them and um if they

make a mistake uh I correct I was correct and I explain why and there's like it's a point you know and I always tell them you'll probably make the same mistake several times before you you actually registered and it's okay don't worry about it that is the process that is right impossible for it to happen any other way so exactly yeah exactly but it's everything in life is like this you know for whatever reason with languages we're so obsessed of not making mistakes you know because I don't know I guess it's a belief that uh

we got it from somewhere you know I guess from schools or something I don't know probably but perfection in general and not being you know making mistakes in general I think this is a cultural norm that is um that is ingrained in us in a lot of cultures not all cultures but definitely for sure culture so you teach English in Spanish really that's right so it's funny huh because none of these languages are my mother tongues exactly so how does it feel to teach English and Spanish is it just because what you why why did

you choose to do it and why your entire business and your Instagram account and the content that you create is in Spanish and English tell me about that yeah because I started it in Spain so I I started teaching English to Spanish people right so this is uh that that's how everything started and right now my brain functioned like this like I was I'm not able to teach English in English or I'm not able to teach English in Russian or in Romania like it doesn't work like this yeah and it's funny because I tried I

tried to help my Yeah my cousin's son uh um with English I she had um an exam and he needed my help and he speaks Russian and I was trying to explain to him some like basic things like present simple and present continues you know and I was trying to explain to him in Russian and it was absolutely impossible I was so interesting how that works because my brain is used to explaining English in Spanish yeah I had I had an interview in Hebrew for like a for the news and uh I was on the

news and and um I was like I should stop saying yes to those interviews because talking about my work in English like I know how to do it in English I don't know how to do it in my first language I don't have the vocabulary it's not that accessible and I use my first language all the time so it's not like it's Rusty or anything it's just that when you were focused on specific content it's hard to shift and feel as comfortable in another language even if it's your first language so I totally get it

it's crazy how it's like you associate so so you associate this topic with a certain language yeah you know like like uh kids like if if a kids grew up in um bilingual home right the mother speaks one language which in the father another so kids associate okay mother Spanish father English and they will change immediately you know if the mother speaks to them in Spanish they will immediately switch to Spanish and they will not mix it you know it's amazing it's the same yeah that's why I teach English in Spanish because I started teaching

English while I was living in Spain and um yeah so so my brain basically associate Associates um English teaching English with Spanish okay that's that's great what are the advantages for people to learn the language in their first language I think there are plenty of advantages so like what do you why do you believe that it's um important for people at least to get started learning English in their first language um in their first language you mean like in Spanish so Spanish speakers to learn English to learn English in Spanish so I'll give you some

background you know in my community there are a lot of teachers and they sometimes if they want to start a business they don't know if they should be creating content in their first language teaching English or in English teaching English and they feel they have this belief that it's very limiting or they would feel very limited creating in their first language so I would like for you to speak about the advantages in teaching English in another language so I guess it all depends on how popular your mother tongue is because in in the case of

Spanish it's very popular so like how will the world speak Spanish right so so it's it's definitely advantageous um now I guess it all depends on how comfortable you are teaching English in your mother tongue or teaching English in English you know it all depends um I've never thought of teaching English in another language or in English for example because it was never an option for me but I guess it depends on how comfortable you are with the language you know so if you're comfortable teaching English in English go ahead and do it you know

because what matters I think people shouldn't focus on uh how many views they get and how popular those videos are gonna are gonna be they should focus on teaching you know right to focus on on uh good content on on educational content content that will actually help people should focus on helping people rather than than uh the views the likes and and uh going viral absolutely and and I definitely think that for people who are less experienced in hearing English or listening to English there is a huge Advantage when it's facilitated to that when when

they have an easier entry into English because a lot of times people who don't have a lot of experience Listening to English they may not understand let's say a video or content or a lesson that is fully in English yeah yeah it's it's so it depends on the level of of the person you you know so if if you're just starting out you will not be able to understand a class in in English so that's the advantage of teaching you know so maybe your audience is uh people that who's who's just starting out with English

yeah yeah Mariana this was such a such an incredible conversation and you have such a an interesting story um what are your best piece of advice when it comes to learning to self-learners people who want to learn English on their own I think they have to just use the languages as much as possible just get out out there you know just go outside and and start speaking in English stop learning those grammar rules stop you know learning the theory I was um give this analogy uh how did we learn all of us most of us

how did we learn to bike taking the bike and riding it right this is how it probably will sell so many times got bruised knees scratched knees right and and this is how we learn but once we learned it we will never forget so English is very similar just grab it and write it you know you can't visualize yourself riding your bike and then being able to do it the next day well exactly for the most part yeah so I absolutely agree just do it you know just do it speak it um read it write

it you know use the language if you don't use it you lose it right and don't wait for it to be better to use it because that's another thing that I see you know by the time when I learn how to use the perfect tense no it will probably never happen you know and and in theory you probably know so I have like many of my students um have this uh the theory they know the theory so well the knowledge right they know the rules uh how to use the certain tenses but uh they don't

know how to to actually use it in in the spoken English yeah you know so it doesn't matter if you know how to you know the on paper you know how to use it but in reality you you don't it's useless really so just uh go out there speak English with with different people it doesn't matter if they are native or not non-native just speak it anyone who speaks English speak English just speak exactly do it yeah absolutely um okay so before we go one last question um you recently moved to LA from Spain so

where do you see yourself one year from today where do I see myself so um I'm actually living a dream right now living my my dream I am going to uh an acting school right now it's a very nice and prestigious uh acting school and um I see myself continuing teaching English and also working as an actor that's what I I want to do that's why I'm here in in Los Angeles so my dream is to make movies in English for my students to learn from the channel exactly to Shadow and uh yeah so uh

basically that make movies uh keep teaching English because you know for me English is uh not just a language is much more than that and I know for many people it's um really uh important to know it's it's life-changing changing to know this language and I want I want to help people to get their dreams to to yeah to to feel happy because when you speak this language especially when you're living here in the United States or in any other English-speaking country and you need this language um you feel happy when you speak it you

feel part of the society because when you don't you feel like an outcast you know yeah so I want to I want to help people um get their goals and get and be happy basically I love that well I'm sure that you're going to achieve this goal in one year or sooner and um I wish you all the best thank you so much for this beautiful conversation I really appreciate it I appreciate you and how can people find you people can find me on Instagram so it's at D languages and also on YouTube it's the

same name add the languages and these are basically two um yeah two uh platforms that I use the most I'm also on Tick Tock the thing name and on Facebook but um I use the Instagram and YouTube the most fantastic so we're gonna link to these Platforms in the in the description below so awesome thank you so much thank you so much so nice it was it was I loved it it was a a great interview and uh I love your energy your energy is great same here I feel like we're very similar we broadcast

on the same frequency which makes it absolutely easy and and wonderful to to communicate and talk yeah absolutely thank you it's been a pleasure thank you hello all right that's it I hope you enjoyed it if you want to learn more about what Mariana does then just check out all the links in the description and of course if you want to subscribe to my channel I'm inviting you to do so so you can get weekly content about English and also inspiring content just like today's interview thank you so much for watching have a beautiful day

and I'll see you next week in the next video