Exam time.

It’s exam time.
For some people that I work with, it is the culmination of several months of turning up to classes twice a week and working through the pages of the course book. The main reason for attending is that ‘you need English everywhere these days.’ Even when people don’t need English in their jobs, they often tell me how a tourist asked for directions and, unable to speak Spanish, communicated their needs in English, even though it was not their native language.

Despite the improvements in technologies related to language translation it seems that the desire to learn is a widespread as ever, if not more so. However, I’m not convinced that the motivation is as strong. There...

We all need a voice.

I’ve lost my voice.
A combination of an allergic reaction to all the pollen in the air and a throat infection has silenced me. Now, I’m not looking for sympathy, it doesn’t really hurt, its just rather inconvenient. I have meetings to attend and calls to make. I’ve got classes to give this evening.

We often take things for granted in our daily lives and we talk so much that the ability to do so is one of them. However, not being able to communicate is a more common occurrence than we might at first think.

For me, it is something I see every day. The lack of language skills denies people of their voices. I live in Spain and when I...

Single-use plastic: war or bandwagon?

A few days ago the BBC reported that IKEA is the latest company to say that it will stop selling ‘single-use plastic products’ - in this case by 2020 (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44398356). The ‘war on plastic’ has really taken hold of public imagination and support over the last few months, largely, I suspect, as a result of tireless campaigns on social media showing a wide diversity of wild animal species with various items filling their digestive systems on the inside or entangling them on the outside. The disruptive power of the internet is very clear here.

‘Single-use plastics’ is a term that is used to mean plastic products that are ‘designed to be used once and then thrown away or...

Is it 'special'?

Special of the day.
Special ale.
Special quality.
Special offer.
Special features.
Special occasion.
Special friend.
Special school.
Special edition.
Special reserve.
Special guest.
Special service.
Special product.

We all want to feel special. We all want the best.
It would be really nice to have the special rather than the ordinary.
However, the problem with ‘special’ is that everything can’t be special. Otherwise, it wouldn't be special.

So who decides what is special? Simply putting ‘special’ in the description of our products and services isn't really enough. If we want our customers to describe our products and services in this way then our goal must be to make our customers feel special. They must feel important. So ‘special’ isn't what we...