Newsletter: 2 February 2011

Sometimes, we need a little crash course in accents….and vocabulary.Even if we don’t need to cross borders or go very far to discover that nowadays almost everyone speaks some sort of “English.”

I spent a few days at a professional event in London last week entitled Learning Technologies. There were two floors at Olympia 2. Roughly speaking, downstairs were the people providing coaching and training services and upstairs were the people promoting their technological know-how.

Many of the “products” have similar goals. They are like packagings for corportate content. As with shelf space, elearning has its visual limits defined by the space of a screen and the designers, graphic or instructional, promote their techniques for making the screens as attractive, efficient and as captivating as possible.

I met some very interesting people and discovered some valuable services. Among them, The RADA, (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) offers executive training. I’m firmly convinced that this would help more than one of my readers … and not just those in Europe!

As for instantaneous coaching … I thought that a company called Coaching On Call was quite innovative. Call a coach? Get your ideas clear!

Others offered short courses in cross-cultural training: getting to know how to do business around the globe: Russia, Japan, the USA … even the UK and … France. If you’re interested in knowing more, you know what to do.

BTW, before I forget, this letter was going to be about accents. London has so many! There’s the occasional British one, frequent Irish ones, not to mention Polish, Russian, Ukranian, Middle Eastern, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Italian and Korean plus some … Canadian, American and French.

All of which are now documented at the British Library’s exhibition called Evolving English...right next to where the Eurostar pulls in … at St. Pacras.

Enjoy it. There were mostly Britons at the Library. And there’s a wonderful bookstore there … as well…where English is spoken with a beautiful English accent.

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Author: Mark