Our approach

A few principles have guided our English training from the start.

Individual attention

People come to English with specific wants, needs and goals, as different as people themselves. The table of contents of a textbook is not a plan for you. We find out what matters to each learner and agree how to get there, developing the skills they need and the ones they actually want.

Learners lead

A motivated, committed learner is the key to learning, and our learners lead their own development. We talk with each learner and agree together what they most need, what they would like to achieve and how we will work towards it. When learners work as a group, the group plan is built from their individual plans.

Mastery: quality, not quantity

Language teaching often presents topic after topic, before the last one is clear. We aim for you to master one topic before moving on, and we review regularly so that what you learn passes into long-term memory, where it helps you in the real world.

Pronunciation

You understand people who speak like you do. The sounds of spoken English are often not the sounds you were taught, and not sounds your own language uses. You don't need perfect pronunciation, but recognising all those sounds and producing them clearly makes understanding others far easier. English spelling also follows a logic of its own, and learning it helps too.

Written and spoken English

Reading and writing English can feel much easier than following native speakers on the phone or in a meeting, because written and spoken English are very different. We help you tell them apart and function effectively in either, with particular attention to the spoken English you need at work.

Learning by doing

There is nothing you learn better than what you really need to learn. So we practise English through real tasks: reading and answering e-mails, phoning, working on reports, preparing presentations. New vocabulary and grammar are reviewed later, and that review works better because you first met them in a practical context. This approach is known as CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning).