Taking intermediate Spanish to the next level

You don’t need to be a complete beginner when you start language tuition. Many of our learners have a basic or pretty good understanding - often from school lessons - and they’re now wanting to build on that foundation for a specific purpose.?

?Even if it’s been a few years since you last consulted your phrase book, you’ll often find your long-forgotten language skills come flooding back very quickly. Which is what happened recently to one of our learners, Lucy.?

?Building on intermediate language skills to excel in a new role

?Lucy had studied Spanish up to ‘A’ level at school, with her lessons having focused on the traditional grammar and literature. Like many of us though, she hadn’t had much chance since then to use her language skills in real life - aside from the odd holiday in Majorca.?

?Now a marketing executive, Lucy joined a company last year whose headquarters are in Buenos Aires. While she knew enough Spanish to hold simple conversations with her new colleagues, speaking in large groups felt very daunting, and Lucy knew what an advantage it would be if she could contribute to cross-team projects in a more meaningful way.?

?Not only that, she quickly realised that the Spanish she’d learnt at school was quite different from the Latin American Spanish that she actually needed for work and she was keen to get to grips with some of the key nuances.

?Tailoring lessons to have the biggest impact?

?Lucy got in touch with Corinium and explained she was looking for some practical, business-focused tuition that could help to progress her language skills at work in a very targeted way.

?We introduced Lucy to Sofia, a native Spanish speaker and tutor from Argentina, and they started 121 lessons together. Lucy was able to explain the exact business situations she wanted to be able to confidently navigate, and the challenges she was facing at that point.?

?Sofia tailored each lesson to specific scenarios and meetings that Lucy was about to encounter, bringing in different media and materials so she could practise in between and become more comfortable with the Argentinian accent.?

?They also spent some time looking at the business culture in Argentina, so Lucy could familiarise herself with her colleagues’ priorities and ways of working.?

?Growing in confidence and skill

?Lucy made very quick progress on the aspects of Spanish that were particularly important in her job. After a number of lessons, she delivered an online presentation in Spanish to her colleagues in Argentina, which was very well received, and she continues to move up within the company.?

?If you want to gain the confidence to negotiate, present or simply communicate with colleagues in a foreign language, our tailored 121 business-focused tuition can provide exactly what you’re looking for. Please do get in touch.?

?* Note: Maintaining our clients’ confidentiality is very important to us, so while this case study is based on a real client, we’ve changed some of the names and details.

If you’ve been considering building on what you learnt many years ago so you can use your skills to benefit your company, take a look at what we offer here: https://www.coriniumlanguage.co.uk/language-training