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At the beginning of this composition, please allow me to describe the reasons why I chose this question title. Though my English education started already in primary school, I can hardly say it was intensive and consistent learning. First of all, there was bigger focus on other foreign language in my country in that time, and therefore English was more or less dependable just from self-motivation and self-learning, e.g. from news, movies etc. Going to university after the high school also didn´t make it better, I would say it made it even worse, as I was focused and engaged more with my study topics and themes that were more important for me at that time. And to be clear, most of the topics were available to us in our language. So, again, it was only my self-interest that was pushing me further and encouraging me to read and speak more in English, to travel outside my country, and in this way forcing me to communicate in English language. I was already working and post-studying, which included also reading and writing professional articles in English, when I actually began to give more attention to the language as it itself. Over a period of time I did make some progress, but as we all know, the benefit from the progress can also easy decline, especially if you are not persistent with the use of the language. Working in education field at all levels (primary school, high school and university), as being professional school counsellor, teacher for mathematics and later PhD Pedagogy teacher, still didn´t get me the satisfaction about the English language knowledge that I was eager to have. So, how did I get the inspiration to sign in for TEFT course? The answer lies in moving to the country where English is not a first language. This life turning opportunity gave me all sort of experiences regarding to English language, one of the most important ones is probably the necessity all the time to communicate in English language. In case I have opportunity to speak to a native English speaker, that´s even better. As mentioned, living abroad opened my horizon in various views, for now I would like to mention only one and the most important for me at this moment, the challenge of how to become an EFL teacher. If I slowly come to the end of my writing, I would like to point out that living abroad somehow made me realized one thing among the others, that is: though I had the best opportunities for learning all kinds of languages in my childhood, I didn´t used all of them as I could. Not that I have regrets, I just wanted make it clear what it means to learn language when you are younger, and have the “sponge” tendency, and what it means to learn the same language at later age. The latter definitely requires more time, work and practice. Still, no matter when and where, the main point is that you do it! In my case, that was life changing situation that motivated me to search new perspectives and challenging wishes. I would say, now it´s more or less on me if I use them and turn then to my benefit. I´m not sure if I answered the question listed above, but I do know that better English language knowledge equals more interesting and prospective future career, and other way around, higher professional development equals bigger motivation and challenge of language learning.
