New Services - English Online

Skype Services

• Business Topic Conversations
• Business Presentations
• Listening Practice: Interviews and Speeches
• Listening Practice: Movie and TV-Series Clips
• Free topic conversations
• Multiple Person Conference Calls
• Job Interview Simulations
• Online Business Meetings Simulations
• Among many other things. You name it, we make it happen!
  

Online Writing (free editing and publishing!)

Writing is an excellent way of activating your passive vocabulary and improving your general fluency in the language. We help with editing and publishing your texts.

We welcome you to take an active approach in developing your vocabulary and language fluency by writing to us and at the same time becoming a hobby writer, for example with:

* Analytical Writing
* Article Writing
* Blogging
* Book Reviewing
* Business Plans
* Business Proposals
* Communications Writing
* Content Editing
* Content Writing
* Creative Writing
* Documentation Writing
* Entertainment Writing
* Essay Writing
* Financial Writing
* Journalism
* News & Journalism
* Research
* Reviews Writing
* Technical Writing
* Travel Writing

Online Reading

Practice your reading skills, pronunciation, fluency, tone and melody as well as increase your confidence in reading everything from professional reports to fairy tales.

Invite your children and have them read with you, with the confidence of a language consultant on the other side of the Internet assisting, motivating and helping in your language process.

Write an email to bloggers@eslaconsulting.com with your request.

My First Day

A student writes about her first day at a new company

My first day at Company X was just great. I started on Friday. When I arrived, the Human Resources team received me with a breakfast, in which all of them made a small presentation about their position and something about their personal life, and then I introduced myself to them. At the end, we took a picture with all the team.

Then I started the induction, where they explained to me the most important things about the company, like the philosophy, values, rules, benefits and the products that the company produces.

Later, I had the visit to the plant. It was really amazing! We saw all the processes of all the products.  It is full of colors and forms. Very nice! I also had the opportunity to meet some operators and they were also really nice to me.

I can say that even if I was very happy with my job in Company A, I am really happy here. It is a company that cares a lot about their employees, have great human practices and for that reason it results great for me to work in this area, for this great company.

Carolina M
Company X

Seize the Moment and Write!

To all ESLA Consulting students with an interest in improving your fluency and accuracy in English writing:

Seize this very Moment and Write to bloggers@eslaconsulting.com.

Write about anything that's on your mind and we'll help you edit your material for great, everyday or work related blog posts here at ESLA Bloggers.

Are you waiting for something or are you just not interested in improving your writing? Well, tell us why and we'll make a story about that too!

Of course you can be anonymous if you want!

Starting up in Bogotá

Dear readers, 

This post is to inform you about our expansion progress to Bogotá. We're starting with one company and one consultant this month if all goes according to our plans. We're right now confirming the details about the deal and hope to have everything working by next week. More information will follow. In the meanwhile, if you have any contacts interested in English business language consulting or teaching, in Cali, Bogotá or Medellín, don't hesitate to contact us.

Yours sincerely,

English Solutions L.A.

Expatriate Assignments

An interesting topic that I chose to use with all my students concerns Expatriate Assignments. The material used is part of our International Business and Cross-Cultural Management series that inspired interesting discussions about the pros and cons about being sent abroad to work. As I think many of us can imagine, the key thing to have in mind before accepting such an assignment is ones family situation... whether or not the family would respond positively to the new culture and to what extent ones experience in and knowledge of the home market can be trusted to bring results in the new, foreign setting. /JAW

Chinese Business Culture

Today we had my friend Michael from Canada on a Skype call for the class. C had his personal laptop with portable Internet with him for us to get connected and after some technical disturbances we were finally on-line and talking to Michael. He told us a little about his background, being Chinese originally but with most of his life lived in Canada. The focus of the class was his recent experience working in China for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. The session resulted to be the best one so far according to my students. /JAW

Presentation Skills: Body Language

Last class I wanted to see the presentation skills of my new students in action, with special attention on their body language while presenting in front of a group. First, we read through a study about body language as a presentation skill, starting out questioning "While you're talking, what is your body saying?". As we all know, eye-contact, hand-movements, stance and the tone of voice are important details when conveying a message, these to be in accordance with the content of what we say. Interestingly, a point I hadn't put much thought to before is the fact that it's not enough to feel comfortable as a presenter, being relaxed and natural when speaking, but depending on the size of the audience you'd have to scale up the expressions, the power and body language behind everything you say in order for the audience to feel comfortable too.

In conclusion, my students made a 5-minute presentation each, and it was obvious that they have much experience in presenting their work.

/JAW

Reference: http://totalcommunicator.com/body_article.html

Lie To Me - Great TV

This month was initiated with a 10 minutes long section of a great new TV-series. First class with the material we worked with a 2-minute section only, focusing on understanding an interrogation with a suspect (the bad guy) his lawyer, a scientist and the FBI behind the spotlights. The idea was to understand the scene first by only listening to the interrogation. I (the teacher) knew this was a relatively advanced group, but I was much surprised that on the very first listening my students could identify correctly the main characters, and that the scene was an interrogation. To know that the interrogator was the scientist was not too easy though, but on a the second listening things started to become clearer. Additionally, the scientist was British, which added to the difficulty of understanding the otherwise already fast English.

A couple of listenings, a checking of complicated vocabulary in the transcript and a full-video watch later, the complete picture was revealed. An interesting topic with focus on body-language and "micro-expressions" was very much welcomed by the students as a part of their English comprehension progress. Let's see how much more of this we'll include in the forthcoming sessions.

/JAW

A Teacher Writes

I started classes for a new group today. Excellent group! Very pleasant and amusing people. Well, mostly they are here in Colombia. The great thing about this group is that it's relatively advanced and the members really enjoy talking, and don't have any problems with shyness or embarrassment and simply find the way to express themselves. The group consists of three gentlemen and one lady. I'll call them C, J, G and V for now.

First class I introduced myself as an education economist, presenting my masters thesis briefly and initiated a conversation/debate concerning private schools vs public schools for the poor. Since it's a quite controversial topic the discussion was interesting to follow. C told the story about his own education back in the days when teachers used to hit the students with rulers, contrasting this to todays situation with complete lack of discipline in many schools, although in no way implying that the old days were better. J mentioned that the different opinions in the school of his children, where some argue that small children in the age of 5-6 should be able to do whatever they want, whereas others argue that guidelines and rules need to be reinforced.

V had a funny example with her 4-year-old niece who invites her instead of her own mother to children's parties since the mother is too strict. On the other, hand with the freedom of her aunt she goes crazy and seems to act totally without control. The different philosophies of child education and up-bringing is highly interesting and the topic really deserves to be studied before practiced.