Behind Babilon Language Studio stands …


Ula Matek,

MA in Teaching Slovene Language and Literature · teacher of Slovene as a foreign language

Ula Matek, učiteljica slovenščine kot tujega jezika.
About me

I have been teaching Slovene since 2021 – in Ljubljana, in Austrian Carinthia, in Brno, and today through a screen with people from all over the world. In that time I have learnt that learning a language is not decided by talent, but by two things: having someone in front of you whom you trust, and leaving every lesson with the feeling that something has moved.

 

I founded Babilon Language Studio in 2025 because I wanted to teach in my own way: on a small scale, with materials I prepare for each learner individually, without rushing through the material, and with the emphasis on building the learner’s ability to speak a foreign language.

I studied Slovene at the Department of Slovene Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, where I first completed a bachelor’s degree in Slovene studies and then a master’s degree in teaching Slovene language and literature. In my master’s thesis I researched the position of Slovene in Austrian Carinthia – the linguistic landscape of a place where Slovene cannot be taken for granted.

That question has followed me everywhere since. As a language assistant I spent a year teaching Slovene at a school in Austrian Carinthia, and as a lecturer of Slovene I taught, together with my mentor, at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno as part of an Erasmus+ traineeship. During a four-month traineeship in the Slovene Translation Unit of the European Parliament in Luxembourg I translated official documents and ran language workshops for staff.

Throughout all of this I have also been teaching at home, both independently and in cooperation with language schools.

I prepare the material for you. For every course I write my own lesson plans and adapt the material.

You will speak from the very first lesson. Grammar is a tool, not the goal. I plan the lesson so that you speak for as much of it as possible, while I correct you as we go, in a way that does not stop you.

Mistakes are part of the process. Adults most often fail to learn a language because they are afraid of sounding foolish. There is no such fear here: I try to create an environment in which you are not afraid of mistakes, but see them as the route to success rather than an obstacle.

Slovene is not only a language. Alongside the language we also learn how Slovenes speak – when we move to first-name terms, how we complain, which subjects we like to talk about. That is often what decides whether you will feel at home in Slovenia.

I come from Laško. When I am not teaching, I cook or bake, read something, or learn a new word in a foreign language.

What I enjoy most is the moment when, after a few months, a student writes me a message in Slovene, without apologising that it is probably full of mistakes. 🙂