Culture and Business

20 year old Alex Rawlings is an Oxford university undergraduate who speaks a staggering 11 languages. He is conversant in English, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, Hebrew, Catalan and Italian and has every intention of adding to this already phenomenal list. Alex’s interest in foreign tongues arose when he travelled to Holland with his family and was captivated by the incomprehensible lingo that surrounded him. Rather than shouting a bit louder and pointing, as one might expect from read more

Over the last 3 years I’ve had an incredibly interesting time working and living in Ghana, West Africa and Ecuador, South America.  I wasn’t “travelling” but rather picking up everything and shifting my entire life to take on challenging professional roles.

Of course, the cultural differences were huge! There were plenty of misunderstandings and probably a few occasions of accidentally causing offence. These were greatly lessened, however, by a few sessions of cross-cultural briefing.

In Ghana I learnt very quickly that I read more

We are seeing a significant upturn in the number of English courses currently being requested. Many multinational companies are investing in improving the communication skills of their senior managers by sending them to us for intensive English language and culture training. These are one-to-one courses, giving the learner every opportunity to build on their existing knowledge and reach new levels of English competence. Each course will focus on the business needs of the trainee, such as improving their English for read more

Given the increasing influence of Asia Pacific countries in the world economy, we thought it might be timely to present a few facts and figures, as well as a list of pointers to bear in mind when doing business with natives of each of these countries. The majority of the information below is freely available elsewhere online (sources listed below), so we’re not claiming it as our own; we’ve merely compiled it into a single blog post for your read more