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News, developments and articles from Regina Coeli
Take your English skills up a notch
For global citizens, it is becoming the norm to speak English as fluently as their own languages. Young people grow up with English all around them, and their higher education is taught in English increasingly often, almost to the point that they have a better command of writing in English than in their mother tongue. Yet, let us be honest—you are setting the bar quite high if you want to communicate as easily in a foreign language as in your native one. Here are a few tips to help take your English skills up a notch.
Working in an international team
If you work in an international team, you have probably noticed how varied your colleagues’ English can be. Even when everyone hears the exact same sentence, they might have a different understanding of what has been said. Here are a few tips for communicating in an international team.
The language of a conference call in English
These days, many companies collaborate in virtual teams or have teams whose members work in different locations. Conference calls can be an efficient, environmentally-friendly way to communicate with one another in those situations. Of course, that is not really rocket science to anyone, but conference calls do come with their own challenges. In this article, we will give you some practical tips and phrases/sentences you can use to get a conversation going and structure it.
Qu'est-ce qu'on dit ? French slang
In very few places in France do you actually hear the French of school books. The French ‘swallow’ letters, connect words to each other and pepper what they say with all sorts of sounds to reinforce their message. And as if that were not complicated enough, slang has also played a substantial role in the expansion of the language.
Learn Spanish for your holidays
Will you soon be going on holiday to a Spanish-speaking land? Part of the holiday fun is getting your Spanish up to par so you can communicate with the locals! You have got to admit that when you hear someone speaking Spanish, visions of sunny, welcoming destinations start springing to mind, don’t they?
The language of Brazil’s carnival
Every year, Carnival explodes onto the scene in Brazil. It officially runs from Sunday to Tuesday, but a lot of partying also happens in the months leading up to Carnival, like at the so-called blocos, street parties in the different neighbourhoods. If you go to Brazil during Carnival, our word list may come in handy.