Biographical note

Alex Rawlings has been fascinated by languages and determined to learn as many as possible for as long as he can remember. He was born and raised in London, where he spoke English and Greek at home, studied German, French and Spanish at school, picked up Dutch, Afrikaans, Hebrew, Italian and Catalan on the side, then studied Russian and German at Oxford University, where he was named Britain's Most Multilingual Student in 2012 after being tested for fluency in all those languages in a competition run by Harper Collins. Since then he has studied many more, including tricky ones like Hungarian and Serbian, and has lived in five different countries, teaching languages, coaching learners, and organising conferences and workshops around the world for language enthusiasts. Alex's writes his practical advice and detailed observations on language learning on his popular blog RawLangs.com, and has also contributed to online and offline publications by the British Council, the European Commission, the Guardian, the Evening Standard, and to the blogs of several language learning companies. This book was conceived in Russia, planned in Hungary, written in Spain, and published in London. Alex travels the world speaking and learning new languages with his Hungarian dachshund, Zoltan.