Learning English

Marcin
I work in the leisure centre: we're providing physical activities for people of all ages. So we're trying to reach them; trying to improve their mood, to get out of the house more, to be more social. People are saying the class really helps them – that's really really good reward.

I came from Poland about ten years ago: now I live in Scottish town. I'm a father, I'm a partner, I'm a student, full-time worker. I usually start at five a.m., up and then studying up to seven a.m. That's the only time when I can find quiet.

At the moment I'm studying for my degree in business management. When you see audio-visual material, you can see for yourself, you can listen for yourself. Usually there's like a short video clip, with some interviews. It's closer to the real-life experience. Sometimes I've got a problem with understanding of spoken language. Fortunately there's always transcripts of that material. Sometimes, yeah, the voice can be distorted by the internet connection or some people they have a strange, different accents, so yes, so that could be challenging for a non-native speaker. I've got my phone always at hand, so any, any word I don't understand, I can always check it. I like to know exactly the meaning of the word – even if I know more or less the meaning of the word from the context.

I don't have to talk to people as a part of my studies. But there is such an option, there is possibility. As a part of my university programme, we've got chat rooms available where we can meet face to face live, so you can just meet at a certain day and certain hour and with a tutor and then all the students in the group and we're just having a conversation via Skype or other similar app. Usually there are like five, six people – it's not like a big group but the software is very good – you can see the names, who's attending the chat rooms, who's not. It's moderated by the tutor, so it works very, very well. And it's always very good to share the opinions with others and communicate face to face directly, not just through the emails or written words.

At the moment I feel like I – yeah, I'm getting somewhere. I've always said that learning is the key to, to achieve something in life. The main motivator is future. My ultimate goal is to go to South America. When you learn a language, you're getting closer to the culture, different way of thinking. Mostly I'm learning Spanish on the go. If I'm walking, I just put my headphones on and instead of listening to music, I'm listening to Spanish.

My partner, who is from Ghana originally, there was a time at the beginning especially when we started dating, I was preparing some Polish food, and she was preparing Ghanaian food, very exotic dish.

I've got two kids: the kids are very, very rewarding. It's great, it's great being a father. The message I would like to send to my kids is "Learn as much as you can and try to enjoy that."

Go the distance.