Hello!
Updated: Feb 22, 2022
Hello, and welcome to our blog!
Before I start filling your heads with all kinds of language-related tidbits and some less language-related ideas, I would like to introduce @successinenglish.eu and the people behind it properly.
My name is Yanika and I'm one half of Success in English. Let's say that I'm the more vocal and socially active half, so most of what you see here and on our Instagram page, actually comes from me. 😀 I'm 29 years old, born and raised in Malta. I love travelling, photography, chocolate and shoes - in that order!
Ever since I was a child, I've been rather fascinated by languages and living in Malta has allowed me the possibility to meet people from all over the world as they come to visit our sunny island for leisure or work, or a combination of both. While completing my studies at University, I worked as a receptionist in a hotel, and that was where I realised that my future career had to involve people, ideally foreigners. I'm a bit of a chatterbox (you've been warned!), so spending time talking to different people is really something that I take pleasure in. So much so that the transition from a hotel front desk to the classroom as a teacher seemed to be the most natural thing ever. In this way, I could get beyond superficial conversation and actually get to know the people I met, allowing me a glimpse into their various backgrounds and cultures.
The other half behind Success in English, who also happens to be my better half in real life, is David. He is almost 32 years old, and Maltese, too. David enjoys reading, cooking and swimming, as well as travelling, of course. His defining trait is his passion for learning random bits of information - which does sound a lot like he's a gossip, but that's really not it. He has this keen sense of curiosity that drives him to google everything in painstaking detail, and he retains most of what he reads. In case you were wondering, this ability does not extend to things that I ask him to do around the house. It does, however, make him a brilliant teacher. We have been together for nine years now, having met at University way back in 2012 and eventually got married in 2019. Like me, David studied Philosophy at an undergraduate level, but whereas I went on to read for a Masters in Contemporary Western Philosophy, he opted for a Masters in Literary Tradition and Popular Culture - which actually turned out to be a lot cooler than mine (although I don't like saying that in front of him!) It was thanks to our Erasmus+ experience in Perugia, Italy, during our respective postgraduate studies, that we realised how much we enjoyed living in Italy.
From then on, the idea of living in Italy took hold in both our minds and it basically shaped every decision we made after we finished our studies. We decided to do our CELTA courses in Rome, in order to get a feel for the English-teaching market there. Suffice to say, we liked what we saw and the learning experience was nothing like our previous studies. We fell irrevocably in love with Rome itself, its rhythm and its beauty, its food and its people. We know that one day, probably soon, we will return to our native Malta, but, six years later, we are still here! 😀
Success in English was born within this context: keeping in mind the wonderful people we met and that we have yet to meet in Italy, while acknowledging that we won't be living here forever. We were not new to teaching online, since we had maintained contact with a few international students that we had met while teaching in Malta, but the pandemic made the potential of virtual learning much more clear and real. Setting up Success in English was, at the time, a way to keep sane and fill up the time we suddenly found on our hands. It was our way to reach out, and its longterm scope remains to bridge physical distance, whether that created by the pandemic or geography.
