Today I'm sharing a tip from one of our language exchange for language professionals meet-ups and it's something that I'm doing to help with my Portuguese.

If you commit to giving yourself regular opportunities to write, this will also help your general fluency. Finding time for something quick is often easier than finding time to write a long essay! You can always extend the word count - I often go well over mine - but it's a minimum and you can always make the task harder as your language skills increase.

You can also add new rules such as "don't use the dictionary" - so you have to use the words that you already know. I'd do that for German and Romanian, but the Portuguese practise for me is also about vocabulary building.

You can be more prescriptive about the text.

Or, if stories are more your thing, you could commit to writing a bit more of your story each time.

If you try this out, let me know how you get on!

Find out more on the show notes page:
https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode251

***********
Send me an email if you have any questions or suggestions about the English with Kirsty podcast:
podcast@englishwithkirsty.com
or come and find me on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsty-wolf-a8478235/

🎉 250 episodes of English with Kirsty 🎉

When I published the first episode of English with Kirsty in 2015, it was meant to be a long-term project, but I didn’t think about how many episodes there would be!

Now we’ve reached episode 250! I wanted to do something different, so I asked my amazing friend and podcast host Rita Prazeres Gonçalves to host the episode and ask the questions, knowing full well how she works! She doesn’t plan things…

And you can see this in our conversation – I didn’t know the answer to one of her questions!!

But this is us. We have spontaneous, real conversations! This time we talked about

🎙 The early days of English with Kirsty
🎙 How the English with Kirsty podcast started and how it has changed since then
🎙 My current and future plans and my 3 new English programmes that are launching in 2024
🎙 How we get inspiration for our podcasts and decide on new content
🎙 Why you should listen to this podcast!

I talked about my new course for translators, my English mentoring programme, and my language consultancy service for trainers and coaches. You can find out more about all of them in this recent LinkedIn post:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7210949084902260736/

Thanks so much Rita for hosting this episode, for all the things you’ve taught me so far, and for your refreshing and real approach to podcasting.

Find all the other links on the show notes page, including Rita's profile and the links for her podcast, The Language worker:
https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode250

Carrying on with our voice theme, this week, Julia Michelle is here to talk with us about another aspect of voice, one which is particularly relevant to those of us who are business owners or freelancers: our brand voice.
Julia was the speaker at a networking event that I attended recently and I wanted to introduce you to her as well.

This is how Julia introduces herself:

“I’m a registered nurse, copywriter, and brand voice specialist.

Having a background as a nurse, it was a big shift for me to run my own business, and one of the hardest parts was figuring out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it!

When it came to building a personal brand, I found that so much of the advice out there was contradictory and confusing, and it just left me feeling like I had to give up who I wanted to be in order to follow “best practices”.

That is… until I worked with Justin Blackman, one of the top brand voice experts in the world, and learned about how to measure and document brand voice.

Now I work with entrepreneurs – a lot of whom have a professional background like me – and help them identify and develop their brand voice in a way that lets them take control of how they’re showing up online and create a brand they’re proud of.

Oh, and in my spare time, I do cold water dipping and explore the great outdoors of Maine with my two pups :)”

We talked about:

• Why your voice is important and why it often gets overlooked in conversations about your brand
• Which components make up our brand’s voice
• Why it’s important for freelancers and business owners to discover and work with their brand’s voice
• Different voices that we can use – Julie has an opt-in on her website with examples to make this clearer.

These points apply whether we’re using our first language, communicating in an additional one, or working with copywriters or translators who create content on our behalf.

How would you describe your brand’s voice?

Find out more on the show notes page:
https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode249