My Blog
In my blogs I write about my experiences of teaching English abroad, my language learning experiences when I was living in France, Spain and Poland and provide some (what I hope you will find) interesting facts about the cultures of the languages I speak.
Halloween traditions in France and Spain
In France La Toussaint is a Christian celebration that takes place on Nov 1st and is a bank holiday. While this is traditionally the day where you celebrate all saints, for many it’s the occasion to remember the dead and to take chrysanthemums to cemeteries. ...
Halloween – What’s it all about?
The celebration of Halloween occurs annually on the evening of 31st October. It is less commonly known as All Hallows Eve or All Saint’s Eve. November 1st is the Christian Feast of All Hallow’s Day What does it mean? The tradition of Halloween is older than...
why la rentrée isn’t just about school in France
September in France isn’t just about the kids going back to school. It’s known as, ‘La Rentrée ‘ and signifies the return to normality and routine after a period of holiday. However, there are lots of things happening in France in September that you may not know...
Why going back to school is a bigger deal in France
La rentrée – what does it mean? ‘La rentrée’ literally means the return. It signifies that the long summer holidays have come to an end and that its’ time to return to work, to school, to the office and to normal life and routine. Yeah, that's the same for us in the...
Something borrowed….
Something borrowed….. The English language has a very rich vocabulary. Many of these are ‘loan words’ This means that a word is adopted from one language and incorporated into another language without translation. This is in contrast to ‘cognates’ which are words in...
How not to compliment in Spanish
There are so many ways to learn a language. The most extreme way is to go and live in the country of the language you want to learn. I did this when I was 24. I went to Barcelona, following in the footsteps of a good friend who seemed to be having such a good time out...
Fish, Fasting and Fools?
What connects the 3? Easter! As you may already know, at Languagesrachel I teach French, Spanish and English as a foreign language. So I thought I’d blog today about Easter traditions in France, Spain and the UK. Easter is celebrated by many people in all three...
Why is it such a good idea to Learn Spanish???
For the love of Spanish Did you know just how useful a language Spanish is to know? Here are 3 facts about the language for you: 1. It’s the second most spoken language in the world with almost 500 million speakers 2. It’s the official language of 20 countries in...
Want a super brain anyone?
Physiological studies have found that speaking 2 or more languages is a great asset to the cognitive process. The brains of bilingual people operate differently to monolingual people. These differences offer many benefits. Now, you might be thinking that’s all very...
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