Conor Clyne

About Conor Clyne

Conor Clyde has lived in 7 countries and travelled to around 70 over the past 10 years. For more than a decade he has been combining his academic and professional life with his passion for languages and travelling. This voyage has taken he all over the world from the sunny beaches of Rio to the political power centres of Washington and Brussels to a rapidly emerging Asia. Travelling has long been a passion for him. However, ironically learning languages initially was not. In short, he bombed at languages at school. He even had difficulties with English, his native tongue. His language classes at school were an interminable struggle. Being force fed grammar rules and rote memorisation of vocabulary not only bored he closes to tears but worse it simply did not work effectively. By the time he left for an Erasmus year in France (academic year abroad), he was incapable of holding even a basic conversation in French, reduced to pointing and grunting as a desperate means of communication upon his arrival. In short, traditional language methods had not only consumed a significant part of his school time, they were also an abject failure in terms of providing me with any semblance of communicative skills in foreign languages.But then something began to change, through trial and error and applying my own techniques, he slowly began to develop the confidence and fluency necessary to communicative effectively in foreign languages. It was not an easy path. It is was one littered with obstacles. However, 10 years later he find myself an accomplished polyglot with polished language skills in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Romanian and Catalan. So how did this happen and can anyone replicate his achievements?Quite simply, he abandoned the failed methods that were imposed on me by the school system. Instead he started immersing myself in his target language using my own methods. Suddenly, he started to see a vast improvement in his language skills. What had previously been a frustrating and time consuming process became an enjoyable pursuit. His trips and professional life took on a new dimension as his language skills opened doors that just wouldnt have been possible if he had remained a monoglot (or a ‘polynot as we call them in the polyglot community). Along the way he has developed a language learning philosophy that integrates travel and other fun pastimes.Since 2013, he has been a blogger/vlogger on his popular website and YouTube channel called Language Tsar.