Hi there!

(I love it when Alastair calls us that. I call everyone that now 😊)

I am Halenur Uzunoğlu. I was born and raised in Istanbul/Turkey. My mother tongue is Turkish.

My first meeting with foreign languages, primarily English, was at high school. Then I continued to learn English at university. However, to be honest, I didn’t take English education very seriously in my youth. I have studied cinematography at Istanbul University. I worked as a second unit director and director in the film industry for a long time. When I started to work with foreign crew on international projects, I realized that my English was not good enough to communicate with them properly. In fact, when I travelled abroad as a tourist, I didn't have a big problem with my English but what I needed was a more sophisticated, more professional English. 

For a long time, I could not devote time to my English language studies regularly due to time deficiency until I decided to go to London. In the year of 2021, I went to London to improve my English for about 6 months. I developed my English during my stay in London. 

The hardest thing I have experienced so far is developing vocabulary. I believe creating vocabulary is the key to understanding and using any foreign language. I have also worked as a screenwriter. As you can guess, I know the words of my language and their meanings and how to use them properly. 

Using the right word in the right way was a kind of obsession for me. So, I felt like I was damaging my own learning process. Listening to podcasts has eased my obsession with this subject. I realised that even the natives of a language use very different words to express what they want. English also has an incredible resource on this subject.

My biggest goal in English is using it perfectly with all the ways and manners in life ranging from daily use to literature, art etc… For this aim I am always in search for sharing this language so that I could move forward to use this language- that’s how I met with this platform. This platform also allows me to meet new people around the world and understand how they express themselves. 

Now I learn new words more easily while listening to interesting topics with entertaining narrations. “English Learning for Curious Minds” is the best podcast for this. Especially the interestingness of the selected topics and of course the fluency of Alastair’s narration makes listening to this podcast more fun. I should also mention that Leonardo English contributed a lot to my score in the listening part of the IELTS exam. 

Thanks to this podcast I learn not only new vocabulary but also new things about English history, British culture and even world cultures.