admin, Author at LearnEd

Ferromatik Milacron, India

Discover how LearnEd worked with Ferromatik Milacron, a global leader in the field of manufacturing and servicing of highly specialized…

Discover how LearnEd worked with Ferromatik Milacron, a global leader in the field of manufacturing and servicing of highly specialized machines for the plastic industry, to enhance their communication skills to meet global and cross cultural communication challenges.

Ferromatik Milacron India is a global leader in the manufacture, distribution and service of highly customised machines for the plastic and processing industry. It has a strong global customer base and recognised for their high quality products.

Who: The participants were middle management and executives from sales, accounting, marketing, HR, and higher management, from across 5 departments of the company. Together the team was approximately 300 participants. They were all involved in direct communication with clients either through sales, service or production and wanted to enhance their communication skills to best meet client requirements.

What: Ferromatik reached out to LearnEd for upskilling their middle level and executive workforce through three 50-hour intensive training programs for various groups with varied communication skills in English. The participants participated in interactive sessions of presentation skills, listening and speaking skills and business writing skills, covered by several topics in the training program.

Why: The teams were facing challenges in making effective presentations and needed to polish their skills in email, report and proposal writing. As they are a global organisation, they have to deal with clients from across the globe so confidence building for conversations with local and international counterparts was also a challenge.

How: A thorough needs assessment was undertaken to gauge the level of the communication skills of the participants and then a needs-based curriculum was developed and delivered by two instructors over a period of eight weeks.

Achievements: Participants wrote proposals in various areas to improve the quality of their workday. LearnEd coaches guided the participants to prepare these proposals and present them skillfully to the upper management. 80% of the proposals presented were accepted by the leadership and implemented during the course.

Testimonials:

1) One of the important topics which I like is discourse Markers. During my conversations I try my best to use discourse markers instead of filler. Listening will also be a useful strategy for me to enhance my listening capability.

2) The Email writing exercise will help me write effective Emails using techniques like You-Attitude. The session on presentations has taught me to create more visual presentations and has also provided information related to body language and gestures.

3)Powerful writing- it will help me to make my message or email more effective ,clear and short. Culture differences- Help me to understand the mentality of my colleagues and teach me how to communicate with them.

Through the various sessions on presentation skills using You attitude, observing and understanding body language, business writing skills in their daily work, the participants expressed that they see a marked improvement in their work efficiency. They are better able to handle client conversations and have better productivity in their work. It has also helped many of them in their personal lives too.

KHS, India

KHS, India holds a leading position in the packaging machinery industry as a leading international manufacturer of filling and packaging…

KHS, India holds a leading position in the packaging machinery industry as a leading international manufacturer of filling and packaging equipment for the beverage, food, and non-food sectors. The Ahmedabad plant is set up as a campus with management and manufacturing units with over 1000 employees.

WHO: Entry-level new hires at KHS India spend eight months after being recruited to get trained for technical skills and soft skills. The global structure of their business demands excellent communication & Business English skills.

WHAT: KHS reached out to LearnEd to create & deliver an in-depth Business Communication program for their new hires. Even before they get assigned their permanent positions, they are prepared with a strong foundation of non-technical skills along with their technical abilities

The new hires are students from reputed colleges and universities across India. And yet, when we assess their English and communication skills we find big gaps in their ability to read and process and listen and respond.

WHY: Prepare the new hires for a global working environment with cross-cultural awareness, speaking confidence, and writing skills to avoid costly errors and build strong relationships

HOW: We first gave the new-hires team two assessments – one to understand learning gaps and the other to survey participants’ learning. The results gave us insights into the linguistic, conversational, and learning gaps in this group.

Then we found out the demands of the job roles where these team members will move after our training.

Finally, we aligned all these insights to configure a hybrid course – 15 hours of online learning supported by three live webinars and individualized feedback from coaches on videos and written assignments created by participants.

ACHIEVEMENT: Participants were able to confidently introduce themselves in different scenarios through our video portal. This gave them the much-needed practice to confidently initiate client conversations. As these were new trainees, they understood the nuances of how to prepare for meetings and how to put forward your viewpoints in front of senior management.

Two Ingredients to Successfully Master a Language

Tried Deconstructed Burgers? Now Try Deconstructed Conversations! When you smile, you don’t realise just how many muscles in the body…

Tried Deconstructed Burgers? Now Try Deconstructed Conversations!

When you smile, you don’t realise just how many muscles in the body come together to produce that smile. Just like that, when we speak at a mile a minute, we don’t realise just how much the brain works to produce that perfect sentence. Today, take a few minutes to deconstruct that.

Our mastery of language, as we know it, depends on two primary factors:

The Mechanics

This is the bit that most of us think we have difficulty in mastering. Those countless hours spent struggling to understand cases, tenses, voices, phrases and clauses, and yet they often elude us when we need them. Trust me, for some of us, the Wren and Martins are just as scary as those monstrous Math textbooks. Fear aside, my point being that the mechanics of language (grammar, spelling and syntax) form the skeleton of the written language. These help us put our ideas into a tangible thought through simple or complex sentences. The ‘correctness’ of these is elementary, especially in the written form as you may not be able to use any other verbal or cultural cues to further elaborate your point.

Communication Strategy

If you’ve followed us so far, you are clearly equipped with the basic language mechanics that help you read and write fairly well. However, what holds us back, contrary to popular belief, is not grammatical skills or a poor vocabulary, but the second element of language- effective communication strategy. When we find the right impact that we wish to get across, the right vocabulary usage comes to you even more easily than you’d imagine. Communication strategy is a combination of skillful listening, awareness, and appropriate language use to thus clearly explain what you so passionately wish to say. Listening to the other person, not just hearing them, will help with enough social and linguistic clues to help with this. It is the ability to use your language in a way that you can move closer to your desired outcome.

Think of the burgers again. If you have to order food at a restaurant, you look at the menu and then begin ordering, right? The menu is where you find your cues. Communication strategy works in the same way.

For example, if you have to sell a product to a certain buyer just by speaking to them, where would you begin?

A. Listen to them. The more you know about the person you’re persuading – her personality, values, general profile, way of communicating, etc. – the better you can tailor your conversation to get closer to persuading her.

B. Think through the best convincing arguments. This is strategy. Even if you think in a regional language, and translate it into English before uttering it, using the right communication strategy is a huge advantage for you.

C. Put the language you know to use. Now, figure out which part of the conversation you want to pursue, and introduce your point from there onwards. You need a variety of sentences and words for this, but if the direction of your approach is clear, your words and ideas will flow smoother.

With LeapOn, we aim to help polish this latter element, which in turn will bring enough systematic practice, and hence automatically improve the mechanics of your language too. Start today, and let the game take over all your worries about communicating effectively!

This is Why You Listen to Celebrities so Carefully

Ever heard a famous person speak and thought “Wow! I want to sound that good when I speak too”? Have…

Ever heard a famous person speak and thought “Wow! I want to sound that good when I speak too”? Have you looked at a celebrity’s interview and admired their command over their answers?

If you have, time to take a minute and think about why!

One of the biggest challenges for any celebrity is, of course, to hone their art- be it acting, dance, sports or anything else. That is the first and foremost requirement. However, along with championing their craft, they also need to master the gift of gab. Celebrities often take lessons on how to communicate effectively, use the correct language, and be charming in whatever they have to say. It is this habit of theirs that we often label as charisma.

A lot of cricketers, especially ones from small towns in India and Pakistan are ridiculed for their lack of expertise when it comes to speaking in English. Hardik Pandya, a national cricketer from a small town in Gujarat talks about how he tackled this very dilemma. At 22, he credits the instant messaging app Whatsapp for achieving fluency in using English. For the last two years, he has extensively been using only English when texting. This is an innovative way of practicing, without it seeming like an added burden on your day!

Another famous cricketer, Virat Kohli, has also spoken publicly about how he worked very hard to change the image that had formed about him, as a ruffian on the field. He consciously switched to expressing himself more clearly and gently, and surrounded himself with people who do the same. He believes that he can now represent himself, his sport and his country at a world stage by speaking in English.

Kangana Ranaut is yet another case-study in this same pattern. She was notoriously picked at, because her English wasn’t in line with what most of us from metro cities believed to be correct. Over the years however, she has trained herself at length, and today she is a spokesperson for so many causes, all over the country and the world. Her hard work has paid off. Similarly. Michael Jordan says “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

At LearnEd, we wish to provide you with this same kind of boost and presentability. Your communication can make you stand out from the crowd- be it at work, at a party or just in a public place. Think of where good communication has brought these personalities today, and imagine how far it can take you! Let your practice begin today. Pick one channel, as Hardik Pandya did, maybe Whatsapp, but keep at it till you succeed!

Romit Believer Story

“Whenever I have free time, I go to educational institutes to see what short courses they are offering that I…

“Whenever I have free time, I go to educational institutes to see what short courses they are offering that I can take.” Romit Vaghela tells me, rather freely. He works with raw material purchase and packaging for a major tea company, and has been with them for nearly nine years. Immediately, it amazed me that a man as senior as him was working so consciously on never stopping the learning process. When speaking to him, I’d never have realised that he had needed classes to help with communication.

“My job requires me to communicate with supplies all over India, so I need to be fluent in local languages as well as English, when speaking to clients and superiors.” With a job like Romit’s, extensive communication is a must- interaction with external partners, team members as well as prospective clients. The job also needs a lot of email to be sent back and forth, and fluency in English becomes a must. The apprehensions about acing these emails are huge, because any corporate or any company requires all communication to be put down in writing, and getting a mail right is the key to getting a lot of work done. With these same apprehensions, Romit too decided to find a way to help himself.

I asked him why he felt lacking in communication skills, and he gave me a reason that I have heard from so many people. He has a degree in commerce, and excelled at school, but his medium of education at school was Gujarati. “It isn’t like I don’t know English, I do, but most of us who have studied in the Gujarati medium have this innate fear of speaking in English which doesn’t allow us to be comfortable with ourselves.” About LearnEd, he said that he loved the fact that the course was not for absolute beginners, but for people who would be at 5-6 band score on an IELTS exam- people with the drive to learn more and excel.

Has LearnEd helped him on his path?

“Absolutely!”, he says, “Tarana and Neesha have been so kind and practical with me, helping me along in the course patiently. With the webinars and the game, Romit believes that his self-confidence has gone up a few notches now!

When asked about what he enjoyed about Project LeapOn, our mobile-learning platform, Romit had an interesting anecdote to share. “One of the printers in our office doesn’t work, and we have been trying for a while to get it replaced, but to no response from the IT team. Our communication with them was just orders, and they weren’t doing any good. After seeing the impact of forming personal connections with the characters in the app, I decided to try the same here. We invited the IT team over, sat with them for tea and conversation, personally showed them the malfunctioning printer, the way I’d seen it happen on the app.” Did it work, I asked. “The new printer should reach our office by next week!”

When asked about how else the course can benefit clients other than his personal experience, Romit spoke at length about how it can help one become more comfortable when preparing for English proficiency exams like GRE, IELTS and PTE. “The way the tutors give you advice, and the kind of exercises they give you, if you implement it regularly, you will see good scores for sure! However, for any kind of improvement, practice is necessary for you!” With this adage, Romit signs off.

I truly think that Romit is one of our favorite clients, having established his skill levels at work, he continues to demonstrate a will to learn, and to remain disciplined at it.

This could be you too, contact LearnEd today to see how we can help your communication skills!

Neesha KHS Interview

This week, without any further ado, we deep dive into the experiences of one of our own. Neesha Patel is…

This week, without any further ado, we deep dive into the experiences of one of our own. Neesha Patel is a trainer with LearnEd who heads many of our online and offline courses. While you can read more about her journey with LearnEd here, today we follow her insights from her experience of teaching LearnEd’s advanced communication skills courses.

Neesha has been in the field of communication and soft skills training for over fifteen years now, and she highlights the need for such courses in an everyday context.

“The importance of these skills is that while your technical skills may get your foot in the door, your people skills are what open most of the doors to come. Your work ethic, your attitude, your communication, your emotional intelligence and a whole host of other personal attributes are the soft skills that are crucial for career success.

With these soft skills you can excel as a leader. Problem solving, delegating, motivating, and team building are all much easier if you have good soft skills. Knowing how to get along with people – and displaying a positive attitude – are crucial for success.”

Neesha recently concluded a training session for a large manufacturing corporation, with over a thousand employees stationed in Ahmedabad. A lot of her observations in this post that you’re about to read stem from this course.

What attributes does the training program develop in the participants?

Understanding the need for business communication
Developing listening skills
Developing fluency in speaking English
Improving written communication skills for personal & business communication
Goal setting skills
Listening combined with critical thinking skills
Conversational Intelligence principles based on author Judith E. Glaser’s research

A lot of leading corporate companies are now organising similar training sessions and workshops for their employees at different levels. The need for trained employees is on an all time high, and Neesha brings this perspective to her training sessions as well.

“Most corporates have realised that employees come with the technical qualifications for the job profile but they tend to lack in soft skills required for interpersonal communication and that impedes the growth of the organisation. In today’s growing economic scenario one has to keep up to the global demands of the business world and so training their employees in these aspect has become a must for corporates if they want to be successful.”

In all of this though, you ask, why LearnEd?

“At LearnEd we strongly believe that the best learning happens hands-on and in an interactive way, where the participants practice, perform, apply and respond to the learning in a very collaborative environment. We invite your mistakes as we see them as another opportunity for learning. Questions are more than welcome as they open up newer avenues for learning.”

The team at LearnEd researches and understands pressing communication needs, as well as the problems that crop up in a work environment which may impede your productivity. This research contributes significantly to our course design.

Neesha shares some specific examples and reports, “Take, for example, our appreciation session where all participants share their mutual appreciation for each other. A few participants got quite emotional as they found the entire activity very moving. Many of them had never been told anything good about them at work and so getting appreciation from colleagues and other people at work was very gratifying and fulfilling experience. Or, our first Impromptu speaking session where all our participants took part very enthusiastically and spoke on various topics of their choice. The highlight was that for all of them it was the first time that they were standing before an audience and speaking. They made their peace with their fears and it helped them so much!”

Are you inspired? Do you think that you too can enhance your professional trajectory by sharpening your communication skills? Watch this space for more on how LearnEd can help both you and your company!

Do you think your English is Holding you back from getting a Promotion

Picture this: You’ve managed to earn a great degree in your field, slogged through placements and/or multiple applications, interviews and…

Picture this: You’ve managed to earn a great degree in your field, slogged through placements and/or multiple applications, interviews and managed to get your hands on a pretty good job. That first pay cheque has given you a thrill unlike no other- like an ideal child, you’ve bought your mum and dad something nice, treated your friends and managed to buy yourself something small with whatever you managed to not spend on others- yes, it is okay, you don’t always think about saving when it’s your first cheque. Everything’s ideal. Then, a couple of months down the line, your manager asks you to make your first presentation, all by yourself. You stand up, and freeze.

You find yourself in business conversation in English, this makes you feel nervous and you may not be able to get the desired outcome that you would, in your first language. These experiences lead you to feel more dejected and this dejection overshadows your genuine technical skills. Gradually, all of this amounts to you trying to avoid using English as much as you can, thus limiting your opportunities, both at work and socially.

For many us, English forms a crucial part of our resume. Even with a basic education of English at school or college, we don’t feel comfortable with using it fluently in everyday communication, unable to steer a conversation that gets us closer to the desired outcome.

This hesitance makes a lot of us stagnate at entry or mid-level positions at the companies we aim to work in, because while we are often very well-versed with the business at hand, we are unable to communicate or sell the same- both to internal stakeholders and external clients.

We can’t forget the words of a senior Human Resource office at a prominent global manufacturing plant, “If I find that an employee is skilled in communication skills, I may give her preference because that’s a more difficult skill to build. Technical training and updates can be easily taught. Communication skills take a much deeper personal effort to develop.”

When English isn’t a natural part of everyday communication, the fear of expressing yourself clearly in English surfaces more frequently. This is a valid fear, isn’t it?

The CEO of a prominent head hunting agency with offices across India and the Middle East reported that they screen up to 400 resumes and conduct 150 interviews to hire for 8 headhunting positions. They have to scan so many resumes specifically to look for sound English communication skills. This is something they don’t have the time and energy to work on after hiring.

Global companies want skilled, educated and hard working people, but also those who can communicate well in English. People who are otherwise perfect for certain jobs, get passed over in favour of smart-talkers. Utilising your dormant training in English to communicate effectively can give you a huge edge over others, thus freeing you from being limited to mid-level positions, especially in fields such as marketing, sales, front-desk jobs, negotiations, hospitality, customer-service and so on.

Take this step today, get LeapOn to help you make the leap from being basic to aiming for the career of your dreams [1] !

There are some good ideas here. Let’s reorganize and enhance this piece with quotes, stats, and paragraph organization.

Why I Joined LearnEd – Neesha Patel

“I know English but I’m still afraid to speak it.” This sentence struck a chord in me. This was what…

“I know English but I’m still afraid to speak it.” This sentence struck a chord in me. This was what I was actually doing when teaching students Communication skills. I was actually trying to bring out their dormant language skill and help them use it. When I met Tarana at LearnEd, it was like meeting another kindred soul with the same purpose in life to make communication easy and simple for all people.

Throughout my career of approximately ten years as a Communication skills trainer, in several leading educational institutions of our city and in several corporates, the one thing that has always struck me is that most people know English, but they do not know how to use it. Here I was, equipped with a useless syllabus from a university telling me what to teach but not addressing the real issue at hand – how to use the knowledge of the language already known.

I wanted to work more on training people to overcome their fears and to best use their language skills for their occupational or professional purposes, not just on teaching the mechanics of the language. Then I read about LearnEd’s course that was addressing this very issue and that’s when I got in touch with T.

Here we were, talking about facing similar problems in the training field and how we could work together and overcome these challenges. The LearnEd team genuinely believes that with the right training program, we can help people enhance their communication strengths. It was this belief that drew me towards this program and also gave me a platform to reinstate my beliefs.

I believe that in today’s competitive world, communication skills in one’s professional life and business are the most sought after quality of an educated person. What deserves more attention is that most people do not feel confident to make presentations and speak in public, despite having the knowledge of English. Developing one’s communication skills can help in all aspects of life, be it your professional life to social gatherings and everything in between. It’s never too late to work on your communication skills and by doing so improve your quality of life.

Most of us seem to have a stigma towards making mistakes inherited from our schooldays. Back then, every mistake was accompanied by a big red mark, a lower test score and a negative comment from the teacher. We were taught that mistakes are a bad thing and that we must try to avoid them. Nothing could be further from the truth!

In almost every walk of life, we improve by making mistakes and learning from our experiences. It’s pretty much the foundation on which civilization is built! So when it comes to learning a language, it’s important to remember that making mistakes is actually a good thing, and LearnEd ensures that every mistake is nothing but a stepping stone to bettering yourself!

Why I Joined LearnEd – Yash Maniar

At school, I was very shy and never interacted with anyone a lot. Things changed with my interactions during college…

At school, I was very shy and never interacted with anyone a lot. Things changed with my interactions during college festivals, while giving presentations during the Management course I did and while studying at an entrepreneurship programme in the US.

While I have been fortunate to have these experience, there are many friends who haven’t been abroad or have been ridiculed for their ‘poor English’ and many more who don’t express their ideas and don’t step out of their shell because of this fear.

While researching a bit, I was shocked to read some of the stats – Out if 1.2 billion population, there are just 125 million who can understand English (as per 2012 reports). This is when majority of the social media happens in English and most of the consumers have smartphones, when the world is becoming smaller and trade with international companies is growing each day! It made me think of the fact that there is a need for people to learn how to communicate, both on and off social media.

Often, It isn’t even about speaking the language ‘English’, but about having the confidence to share ideas, express opinions and create an aura that helps people achieve their dreams and inspire others around them. In many ways, it’s about empowering people to live their lives fully!

Communication for me is constant work in progress – to practise and learn to speak effectively. How can I give a Ted-like speech? How can I be a good story-teller? Learning has always given me a high. Trying new things, discovering new processes and skills. It’s like a magical box that you open up and it equips you with different kind of powers and I feel I am striving to become a brilliant orator that can inspire people. Hence, I always look for opportunities like these.

I came across LearnEd while speaking to a friend about the ed-tech industry and how technology is educating millions of people around. When she mentioned LearnEd’s focus on English education, my first thought was about the impact such education can have on youngsters.

A little bit about me – I am passionate about Entrepreneurship, Sustainability and Food amongst many other things. I have always believed in the power of businesses and how it can be used to do good in the society. With this idea in mine, at LearnEd, I look after implementing the online projects contributing to the growth of the company . The journey so far has been – exciting, challenging as well as fulfilling at the same time.

LearnEd has taught me that it is not about Communicating, but the fear of Communicating, and that there is a huge difference between the two. It has exposed me to the various aspects of Communication and helped reflect on what it is that I can work on.

The vision of LearnEd to use gaming and new learning techniques to teach effective communication inspires me to create a beautiful, enriching experience for the participants. Our game LeapOn is the new way of learning. In today’s time, where travel and time is limited, LearnEd is taking risks to bring people online to interact, learn and become pros at communicating in English. A huge help is that the team is on board with the vision. That’s half the battle won, and that’s the best thing about working at LearneEd. LearnEd has given me the chance to explore different ideas, be experimental and take risks, and I hope to inspire the same in all our clients as well!

This is where India stands on the English Proficiency Index

Have you ever wondered how India ranks when it comes to English proficiency, as compared to the other countries of…

Have you ever wondered how India ranks when it comes to English proficiency, as compared to the other countries of the world? Your curiosity ends here, because a lot of others have wondered the same too. The answer lies in EF’s EPI – an English Proficiency Index.

The EPI is calculated on the basis of an extensive, free English proficiency test. The test is free and open to all, the results of which are mapped to create the biggest ranking of regions as per the scores obtained by its people who appear for the test. Not only is the index dynamic, it also takes into account age, improvement and learning initiatives. It also balances the gender skew, and over 80 regions have been tested, with over one million test takers this year.

This growth can be attributed to an increase in education and communication skill-building opportunities for people of all ages, as well as more frequent practice at conversing in English, both in business and social situations. You can read more about India’s performance in this index here, and more about the index itself here.

LearnEd’s team strives to put India at the top of this index in the next few years. You can join our mission to, by working with LearnEd to improve your communication skills, today!

SEO- CALIBRATION SAMPLE

India is on the precipice of global business and communications. We all aspire to let our work reach out all over the world. One of the key reasons holding Indian businesses back currently from making our mark as much as we’d like is our English skill and proficiency level. Have you ever wondered how India ranks when it comes to English proficiency, as compared to the other countries of the world? Your curiosity ends here, because a lot of others have wondered the same too. The answer lies in EF’s EPI – an English Proficiency Index.

The EPI is calculated on the basis of an extensive, free English proficiency test, the results of which are mapped to create the biggest ranking of regions as per the scores obtained by its people who appear for the test. Not only is the index dynamic, it also takes into account age, improvement and learning initiatives. It also balances the gender skew, and over 80 regions have been tested, with over one million test takers this year.

India is ranked at number 27 this year. The average proficiency score for India is 56.12, and India is the fourth on the list of all Asian countries! What is interesting is that India’s rank has been fluctuating, starting at number 30 out of 40 countries in 2011, to number 25 of 63 in 2014, to its current ranking of number 27 of 80 countries.This growth can be attributed to an increase in education and communication skill-building opportunities for people of all ages, as well as more frequent practice at conversing in English, both in business and social situations. You can read more about India’s performance in this index here, and more about the index itself here. We recognise the trend now wherein companies are consciously investing in spoken English and business communication training to ensure that their employees up their skills, hence bringing up the performance of the company significantly. Yes, you can contribute to India’s growth on this index, and do it by pushing your own performance in English at all levels!

LearnEd’s team strives to put India at the top of this index in the next few years. You can join our mission too, by working with LearnEd to improve your communication skills, today! Our ten day accelerator program is designed to give your and your employees an intensive practice routine. You will be trained in English fluency by international facilitators and will have access to our specially designed communication strategy game app too! Team LearnEd will support you to achieve your English goals and confidence boost in ten days flat! Contact us know to see how your business can benefit starting today!

LearnEd Blog