My story

Imagine that you live in the Czech Republic, once a foreign country to you. Now you know to speak its language, and although you sometimes make mistakes, you communicate without problems. You understand the people on the street, the lady clerk mumbling behind the glass, and the low-quality report about the delays of the trains at the station.

Mastering the language in a foreign country is a great relief.

My native language is Czech, but I can also communicate in English and Spanish with ease. I lived in Mexico for over two years and thanks to my language skills I felt safe there.

Of course, I didn't always speak Spanish. No one in our family learned it. My first contact with a foreign language abroad was at the age of 11. My family and I went on a vacation to the Spanish island of Mallorca.

When I heard another language around me, I felt excited and nervous at the same time. I wanted to understand everyone! So I would walk everywhere with a pocket Czech-Spanish dictionary and read out random phrases and words from it. But the only thing I learned then was Buenos días, Adiós and the words estrella, luna and sol (because I liked them).

And then it happened. One evening, I found myself with only my mother in another part of the island and we needed to get back to the apartment, which was in a town about 40 kilometers away. Cell phones were not common then. My mom doesn't speak English or Spanish, and I didn't know any foreign languages back then (one year learning English at the Elementary school left me with nothing I could use in real life).

After communicating with our hands and feet, we boarded a bus which brought us closer to our destination, but we were still quite far. From the bus driver’s words and gestures, we understood that we had missed all the direct buses.

We got off at a quiet village who knows where. There were no taxis or buses anywhere. It was already dark and quite cold. As true adventurous Czechs, we decided to hitchhike. Nobody stopped for us. After some time, we finally found a taxi stand and arranged a ride to the town with a taxi driver. Everything turned out well, but this situation made me think that it is essential to be able to communicate in a foreign country.

Therefore, in addition to English, I started studying Spanish at the grammar school. I enjoyed learning Spanish so much. I also found out that studying a language at school is helpful, but the main journey to truly learning a language is outside the classroom.

I had a great advantage - in addition to an awesome teacher, I was driven by the desire to be able to communicate. I picked the right accent from my Spanish-speaking friends and practiced the language. I learned practical things I can use in every day situations and became fluent (and all this without setting a foot outside the Czech Republic at that time).

I then studied Spanish and English at the Faculty of Education and started teaching. So when I went to Mexico a few years later, it was a piece of cake for me to speak the language.

In 2018, I also started teaching Czech as a foreign language and immediately fell in love with my new field.

In 2021, I also founded a YouTube channel where I mainly explain Czech grammar in English. I get the inspiration from my husband – an American who loves Czech. I help him learn the language so he can communicate with our family, and he shows me the way he likes to learn. It is similar with my students, we learn from each other.

I currently create study materials and interactive online Czech courses for English-speaking students. I also teach private Czech lessons online. Thanks to many years of experience in the field of teaching foreign languages, I know how to teach Czech in a pleasant way that will successfully get you talking. I myself have gone through the study of a foreign language several times and the process of learning languages does not end for me.

At the moment, I'm trying to learn a little Arabic to remind myself what it's like to learn a whole new language.

When I teach, I tailor my lessons to the student's needs. Whether grammar is your thing or not, together we will find the right way to learn how to use the language and how to enjoy the learning process.

Even in my online courses, I don't emphasize the grammar. For example, I have a course in which we work with entertaining dialogues from everyday situations, another course where we read short stories together in colloquial Czech. In my course Čeština na gauči, I will teach you 120 words from everyday life (for instance, do you know the words šroubovák, struhadlo, or smetáček?).

It’s easy: Think about why you want to learn Czech, and I'll show you how to do it.