Falling in Love with English All Over Again
This week, I finished my CELTA.
For the past six months, my Wednesdays have been filled with lesson planning, teaching practice, observations, assignments and feedback. It has been one of the most challenging and rewarding learning experiences of my life.
I have also been fortunate enough to find a summer teaching job before finishing the course.
If this were a film, this would probably be the happy ending.
But life is rarely that tidy.
The work is seasonal and, by August, I may well be looking for another teaching position. There are still plenty of uncertainties ahead.
Yet despite that uncertainty, I feel something I haven’t felt for a very long time.
I have rediscovered my love for English.
Not because I had forgotten how to speak it.
But because I had forgotten how much I loved learning it.
Before English became ordinary
My language journey began long before I moved to England.
I was six years old when my mum started taking my brother and me to English lessons every Wednesday afternoon. In France, there was no school on Wednesday afternoons, so it became our little routine.
I can’t really explain why, but English fascinated me. It sounded different. It felt exciting. It represented another world that I couldn’t wait to discover.
Looking back, English had always been part of my childhood.
My parents listened to English-language music. My mum loved all things British and would sometimes take me for cream teas at our local salon de thé. We watched British television programmes, and I grew up with Mr Bean, Benny Hill and later Monty Python.
Then there were the Beatles.
I spent hours listening to my mum’s records and trying to understand the lyrics. Long before I knew anything about language learning, I was already using music to improve my English.
Friends still laugh because they call me “the human jukebox”. Sometimes hearing a single word is enough for an entire song to start playing in my head.
I even remember asking for a “Day Tripper” on a bus once.
The driver’s puzzled look quickly reminded me that what I actually wanted was a Day Rider.
Looking back, it perfectly sums up how I learnt English.
Not only through textbooks.
Through songs.
Through films and subtitles.
Through curiosity.
And mistakes.
Falling in love with England
When I was about fourteen, I visited England for the first time on a school trip to Southampton.
I stayed with an English couple, discovered cheese and onion crisps, fish and chips, and even had a traditional English breakfast… for dinner, because my host family thought it was far too much food first thing in the morning.
I still remember standing on the ferry in the rain, slipping on the wet deck and hearing someone ask, “Are you okay?”
It was such a small moment.
But hearing real English spoken naturally felt magical.
I wasn’t simply learning English anymore.
I was experiencing it.
After that trip, I knew one thing for certain.
One day, I wanted to live in England.
I didn’t know exactly what that life would look like. I simply knew that I wanted English to become part of my everyday life.
When English simply became life
Years later, I did exactly that.
Hospitality gave me the opportunity to travel, and in 2006 I moved to England to work in Birmingham before eventually settling in Cambridge.
At first, every conversation felt exciting.
Every new word was something to notice.
Every interaction taught me something.
But gradually something unexpected happened.
English stopped feeling special.
It simply became… life.
I worked in English.
I studied for my university degree in English.
I laughed in English.
I argued in English.
I paid bills in English.
I even dreamed in English.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped noticing the language itself.
Without ever noticing the exact moment, I had become bilingual.
Nobody hands you a certificate saying, “Congratulations, you’re bilingual now.”
It just happens.
One day you realise you’ve spent an entire day thinking in another language, and it feels completely normal.
For many learners, becoming bilingual is the dream.
For me, it had quietly become my everyday reality.
And because it had become ordinary, I stopped appreciating just how extraordinary it really was.
Becoming a learner again
Life has a way of changing our priorities.
The past few years were some of the most difficult of my life, and like many people, I found myself simply trying to get through each week.
English became the language I used to live my life.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped being curious.
Not just about English.
About learning itself.
Everything began to change during seven weeks I spent in France.
Having some distance from my everyday life gave me space to think.
People kept asking me to help them with English.
For the first time, I seriously wondered whether teaching English might be something I could do.
That question eventually led me to CELTA.
Looking back now, I don’t think CELTA simply taught me how to teach English.
It reminded me why I had fallen in love with English in the first place.
Seeing English with fresh eyes
One of the biggest surprises during CELTA was discovering how much I still had to learn about a language I use every day.
Not fluency.
But pronunciation.
Connected speech.
Teaching techniques.
How learners process language.
How confidence develops.
For the first time in years, I wasn’t simply using English.
I was analysing it.
Questioning it.
Appreciating it.
More importantly, I wasn’t only learning about English anymore.
I was learning how people learn English.
I also found myself reflecting on my own journey.
Why had music helped me so much?
Why had subtitles worked?
Why had living in England transformed my confidence?
I wasn’t only learning how to teach.
I was becoming curious about my own learning again.
CELTA also helped me re-embrace something I had almost stopped thinking about: my bilingualism.
For years, speaking English had simply been normal.
The course reminded me that becoming bilingual is not the end of learning.
It’s another beginning.
A new beginning
Living in Cambridge for so many years, I had almost stopped noticing how international the city really is.
Every summer, thousands of students arrive here to improve their English. Schools recruit additional teachers, classrooms fill with learners from every continent, and suddenly you realise you’re living in one of the world’s great centres for English language teaching.
I had been living here all along.
I just hadn’t realised how much I was surrounded by it.
Finding my first teaching job before finishing CELTA felt incredibly encouraging.
I also know that timing played a part. June is one of the busiest recruitment periods for English language schools in Cambridge, and I happened to complete my training just as schools were looking for teachers.
The summer job may only be temporary.
By August, I may be applying again.
But for the first time in a long time, uncertainty feels different.
It feels exciting.
Because I know why I’m doing it.
Falling in love all over again
People often describe learning a language as a journey.
I agree.
But I think loving a language is a journey too.
There are moments when everything feels exciting.
Moments when the language simply becomes part of everyday life.
Moments when you lose your curiosity.
And, if you’re lucky, moments when you discover it all over again.
I thought CELTA was going to teach me how to become an English teacher.
Instead, it reminded me why a little French girl fell in love with English all those years ago.
It reminded me that language is so much more than grammar and vocabulary.
Language is music.
It is culture.
It is humour.
It is confidence.
It is connection.
It opens doors to friendships, careers and opportunities we could never have imagined.
My journey with English is far from over.
If anything, it feels as though it has just begun again.
After many years of simply living my life in English, I can honestly say I have fallen in love with the language all over again.
And this time, I have the privilege of helping other people begin their own journey.