Life can be pretty funny. At high school I hated to study foreign languages (and I studied 3!), but then, during university I started to travel a lot. I got interested in other cultures and learned Italian and – liked it. After graduating in Education science, I decided to go back to university to study Italian and Teaching foreign languages. And since then, that is what I was doing for almost my whole life, almost, I mean for 25 years, and I loved it. After my masters degree in Languages with the focus on Teaching German as a Second Language I have taught in Germany, in Italy,  China and now I am back in Germany. I am a passionate language learner myself, at school I had studied English, Latin and French. But as my son constantly reminds me, my English skills are far from being perfect. Later on I tried to study Turkish, probably not with the right approach. Then I plunged into Portuguese, with the result that I cannot produce anything but two or three sentences, but I can read it, thanks to the closeness with the other Roman languages. For years I have been fighting with Chinese, thanks to the inexistent relationship to any other language. But nevertheless, it is fun.  A new language opens a new world. My name is Cornelia and I hold a masters degree in Teaching foreign languages with the focus on German and one in Education science, furthermore a certificate from the Federal State of Germany of teaching state-run German classes for migrants. I have been teaching for more than 25 years in Germany, Italy, China and New Zealand at all levels and in different institutions, Goethe-Institut, universities, and  language schools. A couple of years ago, I shifted my interests to a related field, literacy and numeracy. I am a mother of a young man who speaks three languages pretty fluently, English, Italian and German. He grew up most of his time in New Zealand, so he feels that English is his first language, even if neither his father and nor me are English native speakers.