My journey
Hi, I’m Gemma.
I was born in Nottingham in the UK and am passionate about foreign languages and cultures. I owe my language learning journey to my Year 2 teacher, Mrs Hutchby, who encouraged my parents to send me to after-school French classes as I had the ‘right type of language learning brain’. I still have my workbooks from ‘La Jolie Ronde”, where aged 6 I was scribbling broken French sentences, drawing pictures of ‘Minou le Chat’ and singing French nursery rhymes like ‘Alouette’. This experience captivated me as a child and ever since I have been drawn to the beauty of foreign languages and cultures. As cliché as it is, ‘learning a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world’.
Naturally I went on to learn French at degree level, alongside Mandarin Chinese and German (call me crazy). After living in China for 6 months in 2016, I came back to the UK to work at the University of Nottingham International College, with students from across the globe. In 2022, I completed a Master’s degree in Asian Studies in Ireland where I deepened my understanding about China’s role in East Asia, polished up my intermediate Mandarin and began studying Japanese.
It was at this point that my interest in traditional Chinese characters blossomed, not only because I had begun learning Japanese, but also because I started practising beginner’s calligraphy. Find out more about learning traditional characters using my method here.
I have just recently started teaching English again, after a short stint in China in 2016. I believe that as a language learner myself, I have a deep understanding of my native language and proven techniques for learning foreign languages. For more information and English language resources, please see here.
Why Decode LS?
My Chinese name is 解码 which translates to decode. This website aims to promote foreign language learning and all the benefits it offers.
For anyone who has tried to learn a language themselves, it is clear that today there are millions of options from apps to books to podcasts to YouTube videos… If anything like me, more time is spent finding the right resources than actually studying the language itself. This is why I decided to compile all useful language learning resources for you, so you can spend more time learning and less time researching useful content!
It also became apparent that learning styles are not considered enough when selecting language learning resources. I highly recommend that you determine your language learning style before beginning your journey, as you will make better progress once you have find the style that suits you best!
Why black and white?
Not only does black and white (yin yang) represent the taoist philosophy I find hugely interesting, but also telephones and social media, which are forever more eye-catching and colourful, are consuming our time. This precious time could be used to open your mind to a whole new world, by learning a language. This website offers useful information for you to learn foreign languages in black and white, in the hope that the beauty of the words themselves will bring colour to your imagination.