Teacher Profile: Croatian Teacher London

Croatian Teacher London – Zeljko

 Zeljko, from Belgrade

 Teaches Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian in London

Around 5 years of experience

 With Cactus since 2015

 MA in Modern Languages

 Has learned 9 languages

 Worked as an editor and a translator

How long have you been teaching for and how long for Cactus?

I have been teaching part-time since 2015, all that time at the Cactus centre in Holborn.

How long have you been living in the UK?

I have been in the UK from 1990. I moved here immediately after gaining my degree.

Where were you born?

I was born in Belgrade, my parents are from Croatia.

What is your degree and teaching experience?

I have a post-graduate degree in modern languages from Belgrade University.

Have you ever worked in another field?

All my professional life I have been working as an editor at the BBC Monitoring, covering stories from the former Yugoslavia. During a brief two-year career break I worked as a court translator at the UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

What was your best teaching experience?

Of all these jobs that I previously mentioned, I have enjoyed teaching at Cactus most. And the most enjoyable teaching experience was a short teaching job – organized by Cactus – when I taught my mother tongue to Emma Thompson and Emilia Clarke for a Christmas movie to be premiered in London in November 2019. This involved making sure that Emma Thompson spoke English with a strong Serbian accent and that Emilia Clarke could deliver her lines in Serbian with no foreign accent!

Do you have any specific language learning tips?

My passion are foreign language studies – I have studied nine languages so far. This is not to say that I speak all of them, but I can comfortably communicate in four languages. The best tip for learning a foreign language is not to be shy, to use it as much as possible while learning it, listen to the music in that language, immerse yourself in the culture and be playful – till all your friends get bored of your repeating what sounds like gibberish to them.

Bilo bi mi drago upoznati vas na mom kursu.

Do vidjenja!

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