Mandy’s story: “More confident in my Spanish than ever before!”

Discover how Mandy Jones, a safeguarding expert from London, uses Chatterbox to take her Spanish to the next level.

Mandy Jones is a busy professional working in the humanitarian aid sector. After spending over thirty years as a social worker, she now advises international NGOs on child safeguarding issues. When she was introduced to Chatterbox, she was working for the British Red Cross, an organisation with a presence in over 190 countries. 

In such an international environment, foreign language skills are a huge asset. Mandy had a working knowledge of Spanish, but wanted to push herself to achieve a professional level. So, through the British Red Cross’ partnership with Chatterbox, she applied for language training with us. 

It was immediately a match for her personal values.

“I liked Chatterbox’s principles and mission. It feels like you’re giving back to refugees, and at the same time refugees are playing a very important part in Chatterbox.”

The revolutionary “flipped classroom” approach   

As someone with a lot of responsibilities to juggle, Chatterbox’s self-paced format was ideal for Mandy. 

Learners complete AI-powered independent learning before attending an immersive Live Practice with their Language Coach to gain real-world practice of the content they’ve studied. The modules include grammar, vocabulary, and listening and reading exercises, as well as cultural knowledge about the places where their target language is spoken.

Photo by Brad Javernick of Home Oomph

This style of learning – with a Language Coach reinforcing materials you’ve learnt on your own time, rather than a teacher presenting information for the first time – is known as the “flipped classroom” approach. Academics believe it has the potential to revolutionise how corporate training and development is implemented. 

For Mandy, this model has proved highly effective. Not least, since she has developed a personal connection with her Spanish coach, John, an actor, theatre director, and broadcaster with refugee status from Colombia. 

“He’s very key to my learning journey. We can talk about anything and everything: what we’ve done in the week, politics, music. This really helps bring Spanish to life for me.”

A warm and encouraging coach

Mandy started learning Spanish during the Covid-19 pandemic. For almost two years, she was unable to travel to a Spanish-speaking country to practice her spoken language skills, which knocked her confidence.  

However, her bond with John served as an incredible motivation boost for her to continue learning as he brought the language alive. Not only helping her to overcome a fear of making mistakes and offering pronunciation and phrasing tips to help Mandy sound more natural, she is also very grateful for his personal recommendations of films, podcasts, and radio stations to immerse herself in the Spanish language.

“The coaching really consolidates my learning. Sometimes I find I surprise myself in a conversation with John – the learning just comes out naturally!”

Tracking progress and seeing real results 

As anyone who has learned a language as an adult knows, the “intermediate plateau” is an immensely frustrating hurdle. Once you have mastered basic conversation skills, it becomes difficult to see or measure your progress – or even tell whether you’re progressing at all. That’s why Mandy really appreciates Chatterbox’s mid-course tests and writing tasks throughout the course. 

“The mini exams are important, especially in terms of your self-assessment.”

They encourage learners to review what they have already studied, keeping new information top-of-mind for long enough to enter into their long term memory. 

A long-term learning solution

Eventually, Mandy moved on from the British Red Cross to another industry-leading humanitarian aid organisation. However, she loved Chatterbox so much that she decided to remain part of our global community of learners on a personal licence.

Mandy is still modest when describing her Spanish language skills. But she’s significantly more confident than she ever has been, and sees continual progress. She plans to stay with Chatterbox until she achieves absolute fluency.  

“I would encourage anyone - my friends, my colleagues, my family - to use Chatterbox if they were wanting to learn a language. I think it has everything, and I think my satisfaction is testament to that.”

Think Chatterbox could make a difference to you or your business?