My name is Alex Rawlings. I’m a language teacher, blogger and polyglot living in Valencia, Spain. At present I teach four different languages: English, German, Russian and Greek, and also offer consulting and coaching services to people wishing to develop the skill of learning multiple languages at the same time.
I was born and raised in London, where I was always surrounded by languages. I have Greek heritage, and that was the first language that I learned apart from my native English. I studied French, German and later Spanish at school, and from the age of 14 I started learning other languages independently as well, such as Dutch, Afrikaans, Italian, Catalan, and Hebrew. I studied German and Russian as an undergraduate at Oxford University, where I also did a module in Yiddish literature, and after graduating I spent a year in Budapest studying Hungarian and Serbian.
In February 2012 I was named Britain’s most multilingual student after winning a nationwide competition run by publishers Harper Collins, in which I was tested for fluency in eleven different languages. This story was picked up by news agencies worldwide, and I was interviewed by television, newspaper and radio stations across the world, most notably . Since then I have regularly partaken in media campaigns to support the cause of language learning in the UK, including , , , , and .
I have also written for several language learning blogs, such as and , as well as given interviews for language learning podcasts, such as the , , and .
I regularly attend all major polyglot community events, such as the , the first and second in Budapest and Novi Sad. I was on the organisation committee for the third international Polyglot Conference, in October 2015, and am one of the organisers for in October 2016.
In conjunction with I run a series of aimed at all language learners, which take place monthly in locations across the world.