Jessica Bonnard (French Studies and Marketing, 1995, County) tells how her love of languages led her from Paris to Lancaster and then on to a career in sharing her passion with adult learners.

"I loved languages until it got hard. I got Cs in French and German ' A' level, decided I wasn't an academic and that uni wasn't for me, so at 18 I left home to work for a year in a shop in Paris. Just like Emily in Paris, I lived in a shoe box - and there was a Frenchman involved - but there the comparison ends. It was more metro, boulot, dodo, with only a couple of francs left at the end of the week for wine and steak-frites. But something happened to me that year that never quite let go. I fell in love with "living" in another language.

I came home and spent a couple of years as a junior marketing assistant, no languages involved, and missed it terribly. I knew languages had to be part of my life. So as a mature student at 21, I applied to study Languages and Marketing at Lancaster, and 4 years later came away with a First.

Here's the bit nobody warned me about: unless you fancy teaching, which I didn't, it's genuinely hard to find a job wanting "fluent French and a marketing degree" in equal measure. So I went back into marketing for a few years.

Then we moved from London to Newcastle-under-Lyme, and I needed to start again. I became a franchisee with La Jolie Ronde, teaching languages to children. I enjoyed the support and materials, but the kids not so much, so I decided to create a similar franchise for adults. I completed a two-year part-time post-compulsory PGCE at Staffordshire University and taught adults evenings at Newcastle College in preparation.

Whilst I've always loved languages, exams and grammar have never been my thing. Seeing the effect constant assessment had on my adult learners, I created 'Language for Fun' to have no exams, no tests, no stress, and as little grammar as humanly possible. With no big academic institution behind me, I genuinely thought someone might arrest me for it.

Almost 20 years on, 'Language for Fun' teaches 3,500 adults across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, learning French, Spanish and Italian purely for fun. We're a BFA-accredited franchise network with franchisees nationwide and 5 part-time staff supporting marketing, training and materials - and we're about to pilot our first centre in Ireland.

Along the way I've written 30 French textbooks, each built around 9 conversations to help people make friends in the language they're learning. We've translated them into Italian and Spanish with proper cultural adaptation and they all use the same highly interactive method that gets people talking from lesson one.

The year behind a shop counter in Paris taught me more about why languages matter than any exam ever did. Grammar can be learned. Confidence to open your mouth and talk to a stranger in their language? That's worth building a career, and now a company, around.

We're currently developing a graduate training scheme. If you're an MFL language graduate, or a native speaker looking for a genuinely enjoyable way to teach, get in touch to find out more: www.languageforfun.org/teach/