Since the first serious pandemic restrictions put in place in March 2020, many young people saw their education, practice and social live turning into online. In this difficult context, some saw the opportunity to put their ideas into practice, to take initiative and to support their peers willing to develop themselves. In this interview we are meeting Marco from Italy, also known as @markintravel on instagram!
How you got this idea, how it developed with the time?
Hi! I am Mark, the creator of Markintravel, the Online Learning Community, where we offer online languages and fitness lessons.
Before i started this business, I was traveling around the world learning and teaching languages by person, along with local people. In 2020 (when the pandemic started in Europe and we were not able to travel for a long time) was when I decided to open my online community and continue to help people by teaching online by virtual classes (zoom).
After that, I found always more students and teachers where interested in more languages and also for fitness!. So now I have a community with a lot of students from all over the world, and a team of helpful teachers! (we have about 70 teachers) We provide about 25 online language and fitness lessons every week and also we organize a cultural exchange zoom session once a week where students can meet new friends and discover new cultures.
After that, I found always more students and teachers where interested in more languages and also for fitness!. So now I have a community with a lot of students from all over the world, and a team of helpful teachers! (we have about 70 teachers) We provide about 25 online language and fitness lessons every week and also we organize a cultural exchange zoom session once a week where students can meet new friends and discover new cultures.
How did you build the online community? Why did you focus on Instagram?
I built my online community while teaching by myself: I speak Italian as my native language and I started by just inviting some of my friends. Then I started sharing some public posts about my online lessons in some online language groups, which then gave me the idea to start to host/ invite more people to my community and to have always more people offering for teaching as well as to learn more languages!
My main official social media page is @markintravel on instagram but I am also present on Facebook. I decided to focus more on instagram because I already started to document my world trip and my friends where also following/telling people about my project, about helping people to learn new languages. So, also for my online community I decided to use my instagram page because I work always with the same topics: travel, languages and fitness.
My main official social media page is @markintravel on instagram but I am also present on Facebook. I decided to focus more on instagram because I already started to document my world trip and my friends where also following/telling people about my project, about helping people to learn new languages. So, also for my online community I decided to use my instagram page because I work always with the same topics: travel, languages and fitness.
How important is language learning and how to do it efficiently?
Learning languages is very important nowadays because if you can speak different languages it can help you for travelling, because you can speak with the local people and also can be usefull for finding a new job! More companies around the world are now searching for people that can speak different languages (multilingual etc.)
Learning languages is very important also for studying at a university and to also pass language exams that can be usefull in the future for a job. If you want to learn a new language effectively and well then of course you need to practise it every week, and you need to try to listen and speak with native speakers,and you can do that by traveling and this will help you a lot as you get used to speaking and talking with that person from that specific country and helps you to learn the language quicker. Of course, it is important to study something about grammar and maybe to use some language apps for learning as many new words as possible for your personal vocabulary.
Learning languages is very important also for studying at a university and to also pass language exams that can be usefull in the future for a job. If you want to learn a new language effectively and well then of course you need to practise it every week, and you need to try to listen and speak with native speakers,and you can do that by traveling and this will help you a lot as you get used to speaking and talking with that person from that specific country and helps you to learn the language quicker. Of course, it is important to study something about grammar and maybe to use some language apps for learning as many new words as possible for your personal vocabulary.
What do you think about travelling? How did the pandemic impacted it?
"Travelling is the best thing that you can do in your life!"Travelling means to discover new cultures, new people and new languages ! You can know a lot of differences between your country and the other ones, you can have new ideas and suggestions for improving your life style! Of course, travelling is a very good option to learn languages because you will practise your new language by speaking with local people day by day. This pandemic sadly had a big impact for travelling because a lot of people didn't have any possibilities to travel abroad and we where stuck at home for a long time! I hope this pandemic will finish very soon and we can restart to travel again.
What advice would you have for the youth spending more time at home and online that they would like to?
"Don't waste time at home because you can still do a lot of useful things!"We are very lucky because in this period of the history we have internet and we can connect with other people altogether! Why it is good to study now: languages online, meet new friends online and have a conversation and practise english and other languages, also you can do fitness at home following virtual classes! So you can spend time at home learning a lot of things and then you can use this cultural baggage by yourself or with your friends outside when we can restart to travel again.