As our site grows every day we want to share some information with you on the way we are operating the project. We call this section «Business Blog» as it is similar to doing a log book where data is recorded in a chronological order. «Blogging» is gaining popularity with more and more people picking up the habit of publishing their experiences and thoughts on the Internet. Our Blog covers various topics — from TOEFL, TOEIC, MBA, GMAT, ESL/EFL test preperation to cultural traditions and current political events.
There will also be some Internet marketing terminology and if you have any questions regarding the information simply let us know.

The Business Blog is written by Torsten Daerr and edited by Alan Townend.

2003 — November 11
Obviously Russian cultural issues are gaining importance throughout our society as the integration of those new citizens is both a major challenge and also at the same time a great opportunity. I've come across an interesting article called «The Russian Perspective» written by a Russian English language teacher. She briefly describes how Russia and Germany have influenced each other for centuries, then moves into the more recent situation covering the reasons why so many Russians have settled in Germany for the past two decades. Finally she summarizes the chances of integration. Interestingly enough the article is followed by an English/German/Russian vocabulary list. I think this is a good basis to discuss cross cultural issues and to seek new ways of living together and building a more stable future. You can read the full article in this PDF based newsletter — just go to page 4.

2003 — November 10
Our website has been listed in two more directories: www.1-language.com — an EFL portal run and organized by Jeremy Paton, an English teacher who lives and works in South Korea. If you take a close look at this website you will find that some parts are in English as well as in Korean.
The second one is www.alexa.com — you probably know this site already because it's a subsidiary of Amazon.com — the world's largest online book store. Alexa is gathering Web information and learning from content and paths to display data that help determine a website's value. What's even more useful is that Alexa provides the opportunity for any internet user to select a website and write an online review. This function is similar to the book review feature offered by Amazon.
Needless to say that there are more things to explore at Alexa and of course it's best if you check them out for yourself…

2003 — November 07
November 5th we sent out Alan's latest newsletter called «Guy Fawkes Night for You». As has been the case since the summer this year delivering the newsletter is like a small ceremony on its own: Alan's humorous and informative stories are read by people from all around the world and every day our reader base grows. However, we have noticed a very interesting little detail about our visitors with regard to the newsletter: Early this week we removed the newsletter subscription form from our start page so if you wanted to subscribe to the newsletter, you had to use the form on the «newsletter» page which takes just one click.
To our surprise no-one subscribed to the newsletter then. You can draw a number of conclusions from this fact. Obviously our start page provides enough information for a new user to decide that our newsletter is worth subscribing to. People trust that we indeed send a newsletter instead of collecting email addresses. On the other this also means that many visitors who come for the first time are quite an impatient lot as they do not bother to browse the back issues of the newsletter before subscribing to it.
I wonder what would happen if we moved the subscription form from the bottom to the top of the start page…

2003 — November 06
Today I'm meeting with Frank Siemens, our TOEIC representative to discuss our new project: We want to produce an audio CD featuring native English speakers who live and work in Germany. We will be joined by Raymond Romanos whom I mentioned earlier in the Netlog and who has written two articles about life in Germany from an American point of view. The idea is to record interviews with English speaking people exploring various subjects such as their first impression of Germany, their reason for leaving their country, differences in the culture and the way of looking at things, what they like and dislike, how they are learning German, their future plans and much more.
Of course you can buy audio English programs but the vast majority are made by actors who are simply following a script based on fictional situations, which are mostly far removed from reality. Is that the way people really speak? Are those the questions you want answers for when you learn English? Why not learn from real people by listening to their real stories?