Interview by the British magazine “The Business Woman Today”
Mona Pologea—My Why: How I Founded My Own School
The Chair, Dr. Ellinor Haase, and Board Members of ICC are proud to share the news of our member institute – iOR Language Academy – being presented by the German Focus Magazine as one of the Top providers of continuing education in 2022 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
(WEITERBILDUNGSANBIETER in der D-A-CH-Region 2022)
Among the 20,000 institutions and companies that Focus Magazine evaluated in 2021, iOR and other 336 institutes were particularly positively rated in the dimension of Social Listening and are thus presented in the list of the magazine’s recommendations for 2022. This recommendation entitles iOR to use the Focus Seal “TOP” as a proof of its service quality.
On behalf of ICC, Ellinor has sent our heartfelt congratulations to iOR and its whole team on this great acknowledgement of its dedication to and advocacy for language education. We all are looking forward to further collaboration to create a better future for language teaching and learning together!
The Languages Corner’s story is rooted in our passion for languages, both as learners and teachers. The language school (www.thelanguagescorner.com), which offers online language lessons and courses (both private and public) in several languages, was born as a result of the global pandemic. It has its roots in my in-person experience as an Italian and ESL teacher in 2017, when I was teaching these languages to the US military and international families in the corner of the NATO café.
When the lockdown was put in place, I switched to online lessons and had the idea of expanding these to other languages by hiring professional native teachers both outside and within the military community (this also provided spouses with more employment opportunities and a side job). When I founded The Languages Corner, I envisioned an international virtual school welcoming everyone and every level, tailoring lessons according to the learner’s needs, and with teachers who speak multiple languages, just like myself. I also wanted to place emphasis on the importance of learning and teaching from anywhere in the world, which is the lesson we learned in the past two years and the direction the world is taking.
As I became more experienced with the business side of things, I also began to dream big. In two years from its start, The Languages Corner grew by encompassing 7 languages and over 10 professional instructors who are available at the click of a button. As future projects, we have in mind cooperations with other like-minded companies, offering languages like Japanese and Arabic, as well as launching a new self-study course designed by us. For more information about The Languages Corner or if you are interested in cooperating with us, please feel free to reach out (valeria@thelanguagescorner.com). Everyone is welcome!
Written by: Valeria Di Marco Sims
Founder and CEO of The Languages Corner