Language Trainers news and events.

Language Trainers Authorised to Teach UK Armed Forces

The UK Ministry of Defense has officially approved Language Trainers as an ELC Learning Provider for current and former servicemen and women in the UK Armed Forces.

The purpose of the ELC is to enable and encourage ongoing education for its members, ensuring personnel are not only equipped with the very latest and best skills to perform their duties, but to safeguard their future careers for life after service.

“The MOD's Enhanced Learning Credits Scheme (ELC) promotes lifelong learning amongst members of the Armed Forces,” says the Enhanced Learning Credits Administrative Service.

Registered scheme members are entitled to claim up-front financial support to fund higher-level courses that can earn them a qualification equivalent to a National Qualifications Framework (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) Level 3 or above or a Scottish Credit and Qualifications Network Level 6 of higher. Thus, being conferred with Learning Provider status is an official acknowledgement of Language Trainers’ ability to deliver courses of the highest calibre consistently. Alexis Sheldon, Language Trainers CEO, was proud that the MOD has formally declared the company as an official ELC Learning Provider and the staff and teachers look forward to guiding former and serving personnel to achieve their language ambitions. “Our teachers have been training military personnel from the UK and several other countries for the past 15 years in over a dozen languages. We know that, even though many of these armed forces have their own dedicated language teaching units, they often come to our company when they need something more personalised, a more unusual language or for a trainer to go to a serviceperson’s home or teach in unsociable hours”.

As serving men and women of the MOD and Armed Forces, qualifying ELC members are uniquely placed to benefit from the advantages conferred by learning another language. Defending the UK is an international role where knowledge of other languages is crucial to collaborate with friends and allies around the world.

This international focus is further emphasised as serving personnel and service leavers are not restricted to enrolling in a course in the UK. The ECLAS approves learning providers overseas as well, and as an international business whose mission it is to provide “any language, anytime, anywhere”, Language Trainers accepts students all over the world.

Language Trainers Showcase Expertise at The Language Show

Now in its 32^nd year, The Language Show is Europe’s largest language event, showcasing the latest teaching products and techniques by experts from all around the world. Professionals, learners and language lovers alike are invited to three days in Olympia London to attend demonstrations, meet experts and enjoy free taster sessions.

As world-class specialists at teaching languages, Language Trainers was invited to The Language Show for the second year in a row, from Friday 15^th November to Sunday 17^th November. Our dedicated team, led by Language Trainers Academic Adviser Mariana Serb, was asked to demonstrate our company’s innovative and adaptable coaching methodologies with interested parties by teaching three of the 23 taster language classes on offer: French; Romanian; and Spanish.

We were excited to be at the Language Show this year and to meet people of various nationalities that were passionate about learning languages or sharing their knowledge with others. We not only wanted to offer a glimpse of our native languages to interested participants, but also to experience and learn new teaching techniques and approaches during the seminars given by other teaching professionals. (Mariana Serb, Academic Adviser)

 

The event organisers made up to 50 seats available to interested onlookers eager to attend a language taster session. Attendees ranged from complete novices considering whether they want to commit to learning a new language to those who already have some knowledge of the language or others like it. Thus, our team designed simple but interesting elementary-level classes for the best chance of appealing to the widest possible audience.

Each taster session was scheduled to last 30 minutes and began with a short introduction about the language, its culture and some interesting facts. Our expert language trainers introduced simple but essential vocabulary, including greetings for various occasions, and tried to make each session as interactive as possible by encouraging attendees to pair up and practise together or complete short, fun exercises.

Mariana added:

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching the Romanian taster: the participants were very keen to learn more about the Romanian people and language, and I think they were amazed to see that they already knew many Romanian words because of their knowledge of other Romance languages. I asked them to do many activities in pairs and it was great to see how complete strangers managed to actually communicate in Romanian. We laughed together and I can truly say that we had a wonderful time.

The Language Show is one of the world’s best opportunities for linguaphiles to come together to share their love of languages, and for experts, like Language Trainers, to demonstrate the very latest and greatest methods for learning a language in an effective and fun way! Such events serve to create an ethos that encourage people around the world to learn new languages and explore new cultures, ultimately bringing people and organisations of different nations closer together!

 

Language Trainers Attends Amazon’s Services Trade Show at Coalville, UK

On Wednesday 25^th September 2019, Language Trainers had the distinct pleasure to take part in an Amazon trade show at the multinational technology tycoon’s warehouse near Coalville, Leicestershire. The massive site is almost 180,000 square metres in size and the building alone is large enough to contain 1.5 million people!

Around midday, Language Trainers’ sales supervisor, Natalia Taylor, and financial controller, Ellis David Rosen, arrived at the warehouse, also known as the Amazon Fulfilment Centre. They promptly started to set up their stall alongside other attending companies, ready to communicate with the on-site staff of over 800 people.

“We also had different marketing materials: branded pens, agendas and flyers, which we gave to the employees,” said Natalia.

The event officially began at 2 pm, and over the course of the next 6 hours, groups of Amazon personnel took it in turns to browse the stalls of the attending businesses, learning about their services, perusing the materials and discussing everything from language courses to truck driving lessons.

Natalia and Ellis did a fine job speaking with the Amazon staff who approached the stall, focusing on non-native workers who want to improve their English skills via Language Trainers’ flexible and tailor-made lessons.

It is through such trade exhibitions that Language Trainers not only finds eager learners to enrol in our courses, but they enable our teams to establish strong links with successful and international companies, like Amazon Inc., as part of our strategy to raise awareness of the brand.

Our enthusiastic Sales & Marketing department has already begun enquiring about other high-profile trade shows for our talented team to attend in the near future! So, whether you are an individual looking to learn a new language or represent a business whose staff could benefit from improving their linguistic range, we hope to see you at one of these events soon!

Language Trainers Canada is now in French

We are proud to announce that we have recently launched our website in French for all our French-Canadian and French-speaking audience.

Language Trainers is a global organization with a mission to make language learning as convenient an experience as possible! We teach any language, anywhere, anytime, which includes finding you a local native-speaking tutor in your town or city to teach you lessons at your home, workplace or a mutually agreed public place.

But our intention to encourage more language learners around the world permeates everything we do, including the content of our website. We provide detailed information on the main language courses we teach, our talented trainers and our most frequently asked questions to provide you with as much information about our services as possible. We even offer free language resources to help you get started at home!

But while our website contains a treasure trove of information and tools to get you started learning your next language, we were primarily catering to English speakers by writing the web pages in English. This is something we always intended to rectify for the benefit of more than 7 million French Canadians in Canada; not to mention the millions of French speakers around the world.

Our promise to make language learning convenient extends to providing our website in the native language of our customers, which is why we are delighted to launch the French version of our website!

We hope you will be excited to learn that everything on our English pages has been translated and is now available on the new French version of Language Trainers Canada. We have even assigned our French-speaking staff to handle our clients’ inquiries and look forward to receiving any and all questions about our courses and how we can help you master your next language.

If your native or preferred language is French, then please click here for the French version of Language Trainers Canada.

Language Trainers Brings Romanian to The Language Show

London- From November 9th to 11th Language Trainers had the opportunity to be a part of The Language Show London 2018. This conference brought together some of the best ideas, best practices, and best technologies in language learning today. Language Trainers was honored to share its methods and excited to learn from all the other participants.

Language Trainers sent Academic Advisor and expert teacher Mariana Serb to share its teaching methods and practices with the conference. She took her 30-minute time slot and taught the attendees the ins and outs of basic Romanian. Her challenge was to teach the conference goers how to greet each other in Romanian by the end of a mere half an hour.

“Thirty minutes was short, it was a bit difficult, but it was fun to share some Romanian with the conference” Mariana Serb, Language Trainers Academic Advisor

By the end of that short block, Mariana had successfully taught her students basic greetings and pleasantries, and bid a fond ‘Mulţumesc’ to all her students.

Mariana demonstrated in just thirty minutes in London what Language Trainers teachers do all over the world, every day. She used the latest in education research, combined with innovative teaching methods to expand the knowledge of her students in a fun and interactive way.  These methods helped the students learn the basics of Romanian, just as they help students learn languages from Arabic to Zulu.

“ It was exciting to meet so many language providers and passionate language learners at this unique event, and I must say that what I enjoyed the most were the language tasters that I attended.” -Mariana Serb, Language Trainers Academic Advisor.

Language Trainers is proud to be a part of the language teaching community. This community helps bring our world ever closer, speed the integration of markets, and foster understanding among cultures. Conferences such as the Language Show bring together the best minds in the community, and Language Trainers is proud to share our methods.

ISO 9001:2015 Certificate Renewed

Language Trainers has achieved the renewal of our company-wide ISO 9001:2015 quality-management certification, formerly known as ISO 9001:2008, for the provision of language training services to organisations and individuals.

 

ISO 9001:2015 certification is a globally recognised standard awarded to organisations to help them meet the expectations and needs of their customers. The primary goal of this standard is to improve customer satisfaction for a company by defining the processes needed to meet their customer's requirements. New to the standard are specifications regarding risk and opportunity management that strengthens its use as a governance tool. This makes implementing multiple management systems much quicker and easier, ultimately saving both time and money.

 

We pride ourselves on the excellent quality and service that we provide and by updating this certification, Language Trainers will continue to strengthen its position within the language education industry.

Language Trainers Accredited by the BBB

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a non-profit organization established to advance marketplace trust between businesses and consumers throughout the United States and Canada. Businesses accredited by the BBB adhere to eight Standards for Trust that include the following: build trust, advertise honestly, tell the truth, be transparent, honor promises, be responsive, safeguard privacy, and embody integrity. 

 

We at Language Trainers recognize the prestigious accreditation that goes along with the BBB's evaluation standards. We are delighted to announce that our efforts comply with their qualifications and deem us a reputable business with honorable business practices. Although in the past we have always strived to provide our trainers and students with the highest quality service, this acknowledgement highlights that effort and acts as a guide that will help to uphold our place as an outstanding company.

Client Control Center

Every year, we teach over fifty languages to thousands of language learners in over three hundred cities throughout ten countries. As we continue to grow, we are always working on ways to improve our services with management tools so that every client can get the most out of their lessons. After listening to what our corporate clients really wanted and diligently working for over two years with our IT team, we are proud to present our newest feature, the Language Trainers Client Control Center for HR Departments. We understand how important it is to stay on top of your training administration and here, your HR/Learning and Development departments will be able to do just that. You are now able to monitor each individual employee's progress with instant, real-time reports as they go through their language courses. To learn more information and start getting instant reports for your employees, make sure to go to the Client Control Center and learn how you can take and track your company's language learning to the next level.

Lower Prices for Online Skype Classes

After a reorganization of the way we run our online Skype classes we now offer the options of shorter courses (our minimum course is now only 10 hours) with greatly reduced prices. Our native speaker qualified teachers teach one hour sessions (longer sessions are available on demand) as often as you need at a time that suits your busy schedule. These are ideal for people who need a flexible option who may also need to take classes on the run. With modern 3G internet speeds, many of our clients take their classes on their smartphones when they are not sitting at their desks. Prices start at $US25 per hour for one-to-one and $US17.50 per hour for two-to-one (all prices can be converted into local currency at the prevailing exchange rate) and the Skype connection is completely free.
More information on our Online Language Classes can be found here.

New Community Manager

We would like to extend a warm welcome to Paul Mains, our new Community Manager. Paul will work as a “bridge” between our Academic Team, our clients and our trainers and focus on reviewing and improving the academic materials (course books etc) that we use, the ongoing and end-of-course feedback that we currently have, and the additional content that we offer to our teachers, clients and the wider public such as free level tests and reviews. Paul is a TEFL-certified English teacher from New York State, has a degree in Linguistics and Psychology, has research experience at Harvard and Stanford, and has participated in multiple Linguistics and Psychology conferences.  Contact Paul on [email protected]

Listening Tests

Following on from our vocabulary and grammar level tests which have been in use for 10 years, we are proud to announce the launch of our new listening tests in 15 different languages. The tests are aimed at Elementary level or Intermediate level and combine great content with a very user-friendly interface which makes taking the test a very enjoyable experience. To see which tests are available, please go to our Listening Tests.