How languages changed my life:
I was 11 years old sat in a brown and gold uniform in a middle school in Leeds when I had my first French lesson, hearing the new sounds and words was exotic and I was instantly hooked.
Something inside of me awoke and I suddenly realised that if I could speak another language I could travel the world, escape Leeds and that brown and gold uniform and see signs and sounds and communicate with other people in exotic faraway lands, well certainly more exotic than Leeds.
I was thrilled, at the end of that day I ran all the way home to excitedly announce to my parents that I was going to be a French teacher.
A girl on a mission – a French mission!
I worked hard every single lesson, it wasn’t easy for me, but I was so motivated and passionate that eventually my persistence paid off. A few years later when I had a part time job I used to spend my hard-earned money in university bookshops buying books in French and there was one newsagents in the city centre that if I was early enough I used to be able to buy French music magazines and newspapers to read on the bus back to the tiny village I grew up in.
At 17 years old after completing my A levels, I took on a role working for a charity in France it was terrifying and amazing. I was out and about using my French, living on my own, and being understood, it was marvellous! I was known as the little English girl and word soon got around who I was. It was lovely to be greeted on my way to and from work, to have friends whose parents and grandparents would stop me in the street to converse and invite me for meals as they knew I was away from my own family.
From teenager to teacher
I adored working overseas and meeting so many different faces and places. I felt alive and free at 17, I was very much living the dream. At the end of the stage, I returned to the UK to complete a teacher training degree in Manchester to again realise the dream to become a French teacher just like the one who inspired me, and I was thrilled at the prospect of a second year overseas working in two French schools in another tiny town in the mountains.
That first French lesson opened my heart and mind to the wealth of opportunities and magnitude of potential travel, overseas study and work. It was at that point then that languages my life changed forever.
A life in languages
Throughout 25 years training and teaching I have tried to bestow that sense of awe and wonder as well as real purpose for learning languages so the young people that were in my care knew they too could travel the world, experience sights and sounds much more profoundly if they can learn, speak and communicate in at least one (preferably more) international language.
Learning a language can open doors where confidence, effort and experience will take you through and will offer life changing perspectives if you just let them.
It’s a big wide world out there and languages will help you truly experience it.
Crista Hazell
- Coordinator, Mother Tongue Other Tongue, Express Yourself NE Festival of Languages annually, since 2021
- 25 years in education as a languages teacher and leader
- Education Consultant, author and Association of Language Learning Development Manager
