Why Your Employees Might Be Struggling To Learn That Foreign Language

If you’re some kind of Learning & Development person, this might sound familiar:

• you’ve been told your team needs to learn a certain language, possibly to the coveted B2 Level - so they can work on the ground in a different country, and/or deal directly with your clients and takeholders there

• you’ve tried to organize some kind of course or training, and the results have been…meh. Some people kinda sorta learned a little bit and then fell off. The rest barely learned the “little bit”

• 6-12 months after taking the initiative to organize the whole shebang, you’re wondering why you even bothered. Possibly also how you’ll explain to your CFO or other supervisor where that money went.

So let’s see what could be happening here. I’ve been teaching languages to adults for over a decade, and over fifteen years overall - so I think I have a decent insight into the process of “taking a group of people from Point A, via a curriculum, to Point B”.

Let’s split this into two stages, like an interview (ooh la la):

Phase 1: getting the right people on board.

Far be it from me to tell you what to do - after all, you know your staff better than I do. However, people generally don’t learn well under too much pressure. A little bit can be productive, but when someone is expected to drag themselves to a lesson about something they absolutely couldn’t care less about…it becomes too much. So, with all due respect: please consider if that person’s time and energy could be used more productively on something else. Neither the student nor the teacher (nor the student’s “classmates”) will have a good time when the very unwilling are shoehorned in.

Now, assuming the members of your team who actually want to learn the language are there, here’s…

Phase 2: avoiding common pitfalls.

Here are three things I see happen way too often:

1. time (mismanagement)

For professionals, time is usually limited, which means any language training they do needs to be focused and specific to their needs. Randomly dabbling in a little bit of this and a little bit of that, will generally only leave them speaking...a little bit of the target language!

So yes: self-study is fantastic. And personally I love it when students come to a lesson saying "I dove deeper into (whatever we talked about last time) and found these extra things, and made this table!". Absolutely warms my heart as a teacher. BUT: it doesn't replace one-on-one (or one-on-few) time with an experienced teacher. So, just like DuoLingo, it's an add-on but not the main way a busy professional should be learning a language for their job.

A common comment I get is "woah - I can actually understand and speak quite a bit; I can't believe six months ago I was at zero!". But that *is* what happens when your time is used efficiently, with the things that get the biggest bang-for-buck being prioritized. Trying to DIY something you're a beginner at, is not an efficient use of your time!

2. lack of immersion

In a perfect world, you could just pick up your employees like a handful of M&Ms, and plop them smack in the middle of the country whose official language you want them to learn. But if you're a busy L&D person in London, you probably can't just beam half a dozen employees over to Munich for a few months. So your next best option is: immerse them in the language and culture to the extent you can. Every little bit helps.

This could mean something like organizing a day trip, even in your city, where the target language is spoken as much as possible. I've done this with students and they always loved it, and got that bit more comfortable with the language. You'd be surprised how much they can absorb when they don't feel under pressure like they do during a "formal" lesson. Once they've been speaking German for hours while sauntering around London and trying out coffee shops or fun walking routes, they start being more receptive to it.

3. (most, but not all) agencies

Look: I don't want to talk badly about colleagues. But if you talk to most private language teachers around the London area, they will tell you that agencies are generally seen as a stepping stone - not where you want to stay. You might work with one (or a few) when you start out in London and have few/no clients, as a way to pay the bills and start building a name for yourself. But once you have a certain network and track record, you usually want to go at it alone.

Why? Because most of those agencies are conveyor belts. They have a high churn because they don't treat (or pay) their teachers well, so they have to keep bringing new people in to replace the (regular) leavers. When I lived permanently in London I would get calls from agencies trying to sign me, on a weekly basis at minimum. Many of them didn't even remember we'd already spoken (sometimes more than once) and that I'd turned them down - imagine how many people they must've been frantically calling!

What this means for you: if you go with (most) agencies, you'll be dealing with overworked and underpaid teachers, who are (most likely) actively trying to get out. Not exactly a great bet for you to place, huh?

From my experience, with agencies it's generally "go big, or go home". If you can't afford one of the top few agencies (who have a long track record of excellence, a ton of connections and leverage, and don't need to be affordable to everybody), you're almost always better off working with a freelance teacher/tutor. There you'll get a more personalized approach and have to worry less about being one of the 174 clients they're currently juggling, just so they can keep making payroll. And all that, for (usually) less money because you're not paying 1.5x-2x the tutor's actual rate.

(Don't believe me about the "1.5x-2x"? Snoop around on the ole Google even for a few minutes, and tell me what you find…)

So what's an L&D leader to do, when you need your staff to get that coveted B2 in German or English *for their job*?

Well, Step 1 would be: hire someone to teach them. Someone who knows what they're doing and who has experience working with the limited time/energy employees of international businesses tend to have. Yep, shaaaameless plug here.

But Step 2: whether you hire me or not, please don't go to some massive, conveyor-belt agency that teaches everyone from 11+ students to professional adults. You're not likely to get your money's worth (even though that money might be more than what you'd pay someone like me - ironically!).

And Step 3: encourage, or even better, facilitate as much immersion into the target language as possible. That could be

- organizing day trips where your staff can use the language in low-pressure situations outside of "class"

- funding subscriptions to paid versions of apps and platforms like Audible or Duolingo

- participate in the learning yourself, to lead by example and show you're willing to make yourself a little uncomfortable too

It all adds up - I promise. And your staff (let alone whoever is footing the bill) will thank you for it.

As always, if you have any questions or comments: leave them here or shoot me an email.

Nick