Top Blogs of 2017

By Sarah Howarth and Anna Sobell

At Language Services Direct, we have the pleasure of working with a multi-talented team of language professionals, who have a wealth of knowledge to share about all-things-language! The start of 2017 saw the dawn of the Language Services Direct blog, aimed at bringing our team’s insights, knowledge and ideas to our learners, clients and teaching team. We regularly blog and vlog about language learning, teaching and training management – and share our pieces on social media. As the end of 2017 looms and our blog’s 1st birthday approaches, it seems timely to reflect on the pieces we have created and select a few of our favourite blogs, which we encourage you to check out:

1) A New Yorker’s Guide to British English – in this engaging piece, our resident New Yorker shares her insights on British English and the key differences with American English. Many of our readers reached out to us about this blog, remarking that it resonated with their experiences and sharing their own amusing observations. Watch out for further instalments in 2018!

2) Spotlight on learning Hindi for business – in this beautifully written blog, Arthi Deepak (Account Manager – FCO) provides compelling reasons to learn this important Indian language including helpful tips for getting started. At Language Services Direct, we deliver training in a very vast array of languages, Hindi being one, and work with a team of world-class language trainers who are passionate about helping their learners communicate in their studied business language.

3) Top tips for language learners – in this blog, Thea Jaffe (Corporate Account Manager and experienced language trainer) shares helpful advice for maximising progress with language training. Simple yet effective tips from which all language learners could benefit.

4) The social media effect – here, Hermione Foster (Office Administrator) reviews how social media is changing the English language including the introduction of masses of new vocabulary, acronyms and abbreviations, and emojis. She considers how modern forms of communication such as web chat should be incorporated into language training.

5) A guide to blending face-to-face training with digital resources by FCO Account Manager, Corinne Taylor. In her article, Corinne reviews the many benefits of e-learning and provides useful tips for identifying the most engaging and effective apps and websites to support learning and for blending them with instructor-led sessions to maximise progress.

6) Learning Business German – this informative piece by Anna Sobell (Corporate Account Manager) and Irene Hill (German language trainer) is the latest installment in a series of spotlights on the core business languages we teach. Their research includes information on where German is spoken, the number of speakers worldwide, compelling reasons for study, difficulties experienced by learners and top tips for making progress in this key business language. Check out the spotlights on English, French and Spanish too!

7) The Flipped Classroom – take a look at this blog for analysis from our Pedagogy Manager, Christian Tiplady on this popular teaching approach which is currently attracting attention in L&D. He shares advice on how to best embrace this method in the language classroom specifically. Our blog is very much the brainchild of our experienced and talented team and we would love for you to read it! It’s easily done: follow us on social media and engage with our new content every week, share with your friends and respond with your own thoughts and ideas – we’d love to hear them!

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