About
Welcome!
My name is Katalin.
I have 15 years of experience teaching Hungarian as a second language (HSL). First, I graduated from college as a Hungarian and French teacher and worked as such in Hungary for a few years.
Shortly after moving to Canada, I was asked to teach Hungarian to Canadians who were either second-third generation Hungarians or married to native Hungarians. That is, teach Hungarian as a foreign language. Boy, was I nervous about it!
I felt right the way that being a native speaker and a certified Hungarian teacher will just not get me through this. And I was right. Teaching Hungarian grammar and literature to native speakers is an entirely different ball game than teaching it to foreigners. I had to shift my focus and look at my mother tongue from a different point of view. But I fell in love with the whole thing instantly.
After this came years of hard core learning and obtaining my MA in teaching HSL at the University of Pécs.
I am also a certified examiner of the ELTE Origó language assessment centre. If you are interested in taking a Hungarian exam at some point, check out my posts on this topic.
My native background hand in hand with my teacher training and my own extensive experience with foreign languages, sparkled by my love for everything Hungarian…and there I go!
Still loving what I do after 15 years. 🙂
I have been passionate about teaching from the moment I stepped into my first classroom, and became obsessed with teaching Hungarian as a second language.
I have realized along the years that only a small fraction of those interested in Hungarian can actually make it to a formal language class weekly to learn from a teacher face-to-face. So I set up this website to reach out to those who can only learn from home.
Also, students often start out by purchasing Hungarian dictionaries, textbooks and programs with fast-easy-no-effort-fluent-by-tomorrow kind of promises… only to feel overwhelmed and/or getting nowhere with it, thus abandoning the whole idea of learning Hungarian way too soon.
Foreign languages are not just part of my work: if you were to drop by our home for a coffee, you would hear 4 languages spoken at any given time.
