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

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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

Our voices are so much more than the way we speak. This is part of it, but finding and using our unique voice is about more than that. It’s about expressing who we are, what we think, how we feel, and the messages that we want to share.

Every day, we play different roles and adopt different communication styles depending on what we’re doing and whom we’re with. That’s normal.

But sometimes, the version of ourselves that people meet when we’re using an dditional language is not 100% who we are and this can make it harder for us to communicate and for others to get to know us.

Today I’m talking about a couple of reasons for this – and they’re not all entirely language-related. I also talk about a short exercise that you can do to find out where your blockages might be.

If you’re a freelancer or business owner who uses English as an additional language and you’d like to explore this in more detail, I’m offering a new 11-week mentoring programme called "Discover your voice in English."
https://englishwithkirsty.com/discover-your-voice-in-english/

Send me a message at kirsty@englishwithkirsty.com if you have any questions about this programme or if you’d like to set up a call to discover whether it’s right for you.

I met Sion through the networking for language professionals sessions that I run with Rita Prazeres Gonçalves. I thought it would be good to talk with Sion about her work and her experiences of moving from the US to France and then later to Spain, where she now lives and works.

Sion Dayson is an American voice actor based in Valencia, Spain. She works in many genres of voiceover, and specializes in eLearning, corporate narration, audio description, and materials for English-language learners. She’s voiced projects for clients including LG, Pearson, Business Spotlight, the National Academy of Sports Medicine, Iberian Media, among many others.

She’s also narrated more than 130 titles for Blinkist, an app that summarizes the key takeaways from bestselling books. Her Blinkist credits include titles by Michelle Obama, Brene Brown, Robin Sharma, and many more.

In addition to her six years in Spain, Sion’s experience with different languages includes studying in Mexico and Ghana, and ten years living in Paris, where she acquired French nationality.

We talked about:

🗣 Sion’s work as a voice actor and her story in relation to learning other languages.

🗣 How the lockdown became a turning point in Sion’s career.

🗣 Some cultural differences when comparing life in the US, France, and Spain.

🗣 Things that have helped Sion to improve her Spanish while living in Spain.

🗣 How speaking an additional language can facilitate better communication with clients, even when the service you provide is in English.

Find out more on the show notes page:
https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode247

Marta is originally from Barcelona and has lived in Germany since 2002. She is a freelance translator who works from German and English into Spanish and Catalan, specialising in marketing and advertising.

After many years of struggling with self-doubt, impostor syndrome and a fierce inner critic, Marta now offers consultancy services for fellow translators and interpreters, focusing on marketing and time management. What she enjoys most is encouraging people to believe in themselves and helping them to overcome their perfectionism when needed.

We talked about:

• How we define perfectionism
• How perfection appears in the context of language learning
• How good attention to detail can help us, but perfectionism can also hold us back or make life harder
• Some practical tips and strategies for dealing with our perfectionist tendencies and reducing their impact on ourselves and our performance.
• Who and what can help us.

Find out more on theshow notes page;
https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode246/

My guest today is Joana Lisboa from Unleash your Vocal Power. We met on LinkedIn last year when I think I commented on one of Joana’s voice-related posts. Then, after chatting some more, I thought she would be a great guest for the podcast.

For the past 12 years, Joana’s life mission has been to help others find their authentic voice. The process of self-discovery she suggests to her clients has been proven by her before starting her career as a Vocal Coach. She went from being a shy girl, barely heard, to someone who believes in applying her vocal power authentically, no matter the circumstances. She works with entrepreneurs and companies and also gives singing lessons. Anything related to voice and body captures her attention: communication, singing, acting, cinema, dancing.

We talked about:

🎙 Joana’s story and how she came into vocal coaching
🎙 How both shy and outgoing people both have communication challenges
🎙 Why it’s important to know your voice and how you can be creative and flexible with it. The freedom when you can be yourself!
🎙 How public speaking can help you to develop and discover your voice
🎙 The best advice – to be present and focus on what’s happening here and now.

Find out more on the show notes page:
https://englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode245/

I loved recording this episode!

Originally I asked for volunteers from the conversation club for freelancers and business owners to record an episode with me about why they come to the club, how it has helped them, and what advice they would give to anyone who was thinking about coming along. Patricia, Maria, Anja, Lieselotte, and Marta all volunteered and I was so happy to hear what they had to say. I’m proud of what we are creating together and so happy that a recurring theme was the feeling of safety within the club – safety to use the language, talk freely, and even make mistakes!

The club is for people who aren’t looking for a course, but who would like to have an opportunity to speak English in a welcoming and friendly group. We have a topic that is related to freelancing or running your own business and everyone has the opportunity to ask questions, share ideas, and we can all learn from each other.

So, if you’d like to join us at the conversation club, you can sign up or find out more on the club's page:
https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/conversations

or on the show notes page for this episode:
https://www.englishwithkirsty.com/podcast/episode244

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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/