Language coaching in Cardiff (South Wales). Learn how to learn a language the fun way, and be speaking independently in just a few months. That was back in 2017.
Learn from a qualified linguist in the field of language acquisition who has learned 2 languages as an adult. Hi I'm Lochlann, and I teach people how to learn languages, and have been learning them as a hobby since around 2019, but my experience with language goes back way further than that. I grew up in a monolingual English household, but my extended family each spoke a minority language, Canton
ese on my dad's side, and Anglo-Romani on my mum's. My parents speak neither of their heritage languages as they "aren't useful", so I didn't grow up with them, but I heard Cantonese in particular from my grandmother and extended family. I didn't have much if any contact with other foreign languages, nor did I begin to start learning another language until I was 13 and started at a new secondary school, where I had to study French, then German, then Spanish and Italian. I remember being dropped into my first French class and being completely overwhelmed, I didn't know how to pronounce any of the words and it seemed like I was just bad at it. Lucky for me though, I lived in the middle of England and not France, so it wasn't an important subject anyway... right? Well, let's fast forward a few months and we start learning German alongside our French lessons; I LOVED German, it felt intuitive and logical and it was great, but I was never actually able to hold conversations in it because the school system hid so much of it from us and didn't encourage us to go out and explore this language. Once our teacher left the school, I never did German again. The same thing happened with Italian. It wasn't until I took Spanish in the year before my GCSEs that I felt like I could maybe get somewhere, with languages, even just to the tourist level, and I made some really good progress but I never got to speak, and I couldn't understand anything that was said to me, I could only read simple texts and put sentences together in a very messy-but-comprehensible way. During this period, I took my first trip abroad to Europe, going through France and ending in Catalonia. Seeing all the road signs in foreign languages, seeing languages I didn't even know existed, and just being somewhere totally different to the English speaking world really lit up my world, but it felt like I was forever going to be barred from all this new stuff and left out. At the end of my GCSEs I ended up with a D in Spanish and was back in that mindset of "maybe languages just aren't my thing". In 2019, I downloaded DuoLingo and tried learning Dutch. I failed. In 2020 I took to Russian, I failed but learned a good deal in 6 months, and had achieved a tourists level of the language, far less than I would be happy with nowadays in the same amount of time, but I didn't know what I was doing at the time. Then In 2021, I took a trip to Romania for a month. I spoke no Romanian, but I still had my choppy secondary school Spanish which consisted of about 50 words at this point and those 50 words saved me because for some reason, lots of Romanians have some knowledge of Spanish. From this I learned Romanian and Spanish are related, and that there are language families where learning one language gives some understanding of another. I come home, I knuckle down and learn Spanish using a new method: flashcards and a grammarbook... and Netflix. In 3 months I was capable of conversation and went to Spain for a month... and couldn't understand a word anyone said to me. My spoken Spanish had improved, but I was still hopeless at two-way communication. When I returned home I felt defeated, but carried on. It was around this time I got into teaching English as a Foreign Language, and this is what completely changed the way I learn languages. I dove deep into applied linguistics and read study after study on language acquisition, started my degree in modern languages and became a Trinity College qualified EFL teacher, I returned to French, wanting to test my new method on what seemed to me to be an impenetrable language from my childhood. in just over a month I could understand most of what I read and about two thirds of what I heard. I was able to fluidly hold conversations and be understood. I have since refined the method to be able to make words more memorable as I was constantly forgetting words mid conversation, and have a focus on getting a feel for the grammar without explicitly reading up on it first. Today, my French is conversational, Spanish feels very comfortable, and I am now working on Welsh using the most effective method yet. So why do I want to help you learn a language? Because I know what it's like to desperately want learn something and feeling like it is out of your reach and not knowing why. Ever since hearing Cantonese in my grandmother's living room as a kid I've wanted to be able to speak a different language, and now that I've learned the how of it, I want to help people like me do the same by showing them that it isn't that you can't learn a language or that your bad at it, it's that you haven't found the right method. The other goal for me, is in language preservation. Like I mentioned earlier, I do not speak Cantonese. In my family it will become lost when my grandmother passes. This is a shame as it is such a beautiful and rich language. Since moving to Wales, I have fallen in love with Welsh and I can see that Welsh is in trouble and I would like to help anyone who wants to learn it to do so effectively, and to build good memories with the language.
07/05/2025
Did you struggle with languages in school? Do you have an upcoming holiday abroad and want to be able to have a more unique experience?
I offer online and in person (in Cardiff) language coaching sessions to give you the resources, methods and support you need to really speak and immerse in your language from the comfort of your own home.
My method is very different to what you would've encountered in school- there is no rote-memorisation of verb conjugations, word lists or mutations; I will teach you how to learn effectively, and in a way which is fun, and guide you through the process until you are a fully independent language learner (which takes a lot less time than you'd think)
Call today on 07380 375894 or send me a message for a free consultation.
Did you struggle with languages in school? Do you have an upcoming holiday abroad and want to be able to have a more unique experience?
I offer online and in person (in Cardiff) language coaching sessions to give you the resources, methods and support you need to really speak and immerse in your language from the comfort of your own home.
My method is very different to what you would've encountered in school- there is no rote-memorisation of verb conjugations, word lists or mutations; I will teach you how to learn effectively, and in a way which is fun, and guide you through the process until you are a fully independent language learner (which takes a lot less time than you'd think)
Call today on 07380 375894 or send me a message for a free consultation.
Learn a Language with Lochlann
Language coaching in Cardiff (South Wales). Learn how to learn a language the fun way, and be speaking independently in just a few months. Learn from a qualified linguist in the field of language acquisition who has learned 2 languages as an adult.
01/05/2025
Want to learn a language but aren't sure which one to go for? Take a look at some of the things you might want to consider for some inspiration.
Many people believe learning Welsh in South Wales is pointless because 'no one speaks it'. However the data from the last census shows us that between 10% and 25% of the people in Cardiff speak Welsh. Thats between 37000 and 93000 people in Cardiff alone who speak Welsh, and there are of course more in the Vale of Glamorgan and RCT. Welsh also happens to be one of the easiest languages to learn if you live in Wales due to the number of resources for it aimed at learners.
01/05/2025
This is data from the European Commission on the percentage of people able to hold a converation in English. I think this map highlights the utilitiy of learning a foreign language quite well, especially in destinations Brits like to visit the most, who have the lowest proficiencies overall. Just think of all the people you could meet by having conversational Spanish under your belt...
01/05/2025
The FSI ranks languages based on difficulty for an English speaker, with category I being the easiest and category V being the hardest. It's reassuring to know that the languages most English speakers want to learn, are also among the easiest (Spanish, Italian, French), and the runners up aren't that much more difficult either with German being a mere 6 week difference in time to proficiency. I would place Welsh in the higher end of Category I, as while it is very different to English, most people in Wales are surrounded by it daily and have opportunities to interact with Welsh speaking communities.
01/05/2025
Ah languages... English speakers find it notoriously hard to learn them, yet around a third of the UK regrets not having learned them in school/kept up with them after leaving school. This leads to all sorts of problems with communication when travelling abroad, whether its getting overcharged in tourist centres, not feeling comfortable when ordering food in a French Café, or just the fact that you need to play charades whenever you come in contact with the locals! Here in Wales, we have the additional fact that the language which bears the name of the country isn't spoken by even half its population, locking people out of the rich cultural heritage the nation has to offer.
What if you could overcome all these problems and get a deeper, richer experience when you travel abroad? What if instead of flustering when presented with a Menu del Día and being unable to ask what it is, you could, and then have light chatter with the waiter in this sleepy restaurant while you wait? What if rather than just visit the big tourist traps written about in travel guides and blogs, you could ask locals about the hidden gems only they know about? And what if you could turn that little village in the Alps into a second home where you feel completely comfortable interacting with everyone and doing all your daily tasks in the local language, removing all of that friction you felt before and becoming more than just a tourist?
Schools don't do a good job of teaching languages. The methodology they use goes entirely against what we know to work in the field of linguistics, but they still haven't caught up yet. My solution to this isn't anything brand new to the field of language education as hobbyists have been using it for years. However very few people outside of linguistics circles know how, and many assume that because they failed at learning a language in school, that they are just "bad at languages". And to that I would reassure you that you aren't "bad at languages", the school system is.
With my method, words will no longer slip in one ear and out the other. You will create strong associations between words, images, and sounds and work your way through the language step by step, starting with vocabulary, so that even without grammar, you will be able to understand a huge chunk of the written and spoken language. When we move onto grammar study, we won't look at rules and all the exceptions, we will use our understanding of the words and the context they are in to learn the grammar intuitively without rote memorisation (a practice proven to be ineffective, but which schools insist on using). This is a guided process led by a linguist with a degree in modern languages and 3 years in language education, who has learned 2 foreign languages as an adult and is currently learning a third.
As long as the language you wish to learn is somewhat widespread and has work written in it (Irish is the smallest language I've tested it with that has worked), this method will work. For a European language, you can expect to be having conversations in around 3 months if you commit to the small time investment daily, and within 6 months to a year you can expect to be very comfortable using your language.
Call now to connect with business.
26/03/2025
Want to learn a new language but don't know where to start?
Going on holiday soon and want to talk to locals on your trip?
Maybe you've always wanted to learn Welsh but your school taught it poorly (as they so often do)?
I offer online and in person (in Cardiff) language coaching sessions to give you the resources, methods and support you need to really speak and immerse in your language from the comfort of your own home.
My method is very different to what you would've encountered in school- there is no rote-memorisation of verb conjugations, word lists or mutations; I will teach you how to learn effectively, and in a way which is fun, and guide you through the process until you are a fully independent language learner (which takes a lot less time than you'd think)
Call today on 07380 375894 or send me a message for a free consultation.
Learn a Language with Lochlann
Language coaching in Cardiff (South Wales). Learn how to learn a language the fun way, and be speaking independently in just a few months. Learn from a qualified linguist in the field of language acquisition who has learned 2 languages as an adult.
07/05/2025
01/05/2025
01/05/2025
01/05/2025
01/05/2025