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.

2004 — August 18
When we started the NetLog in the summer of 2003 I used to make one entry every day. Then things slowed down a bit and now I am going write more frequently again because every day — or even every minute — something new happens. English-test.net has been online a little over a year now and we want to develop our website until we can work on it full time. At this point we still have additional jobs and sources of income which give us access to a variety of companies, businesses and opportunities. One of our ventures is the Russian language medium Leipziger.RU — an ideal tool to establish contacts through the close knit Russian community in Germany and Europe. Last week we received an email from the director of a Prague based Russian academy of business administration. They offer a range of training courses for Russian speaking company executives and want to use Leipziger.RU as their advertising channel in Germany. It's interesting to see how fast the Russian network of businesses and organizations has spread across Europe. Germany and the Slavic EU nations in particular seem to provide a good infrastructure for the Russian community to thrive. Earlier this summer Russia and Germany signed a 10 billion $ business contract that underlines how closely both countries are linked. It goes without saying that the differences in culture, mentality and legal structure also pose a lot of challenges. Russians have their own way of conducting business and any western company should take this into account IF they want to do business with people from the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). Leipziger.RU is going to provide information on the current situation in Russia and the Ukraine to raise awareness of cultural differences and the tremendous potential that can be unleashed by approaching those countries in the right way.

2004 — August 17
A student from Kuwait has started an interesting discussion on our forum by asking all members to talk about their favourite job. «Bent_ilq8» (if you read that you get «Bent I'll Kuwait») says that she or he might want to become either a dentist or a civil engineer. Then she goes on to list advantages and drawbacks of both options stating that the job of an engineer suits men better than women. Although it's probably true that there are more male than female engineers, this doesn't necessarily mean that men are better at civil engineering. Does the fact that far more men work as investment brokers prove that they have a better feeling than women for taking risks and making decisions? Anyway the question about which job to choose is highly important because we spend the vast majority of our lives at work. Yet there are only very few people who ever think about how jobs are created and many are of the opinion their salary is less than the value they generate through their work. That's how our world is balanced; a small number of people analyze their surroundings and develop the skill to create circumstances that meet their needs while the rest of us follow their decisions. What do you think about all this? If you like you can share your views with us here: Let us talk about jobs / What do you want to talk about?

2004 — August 16
Tenses represent one area of English grammar that causes most difficulties for its learners. People often muddle up time dimensions with tenses. In any language there are only three time dimensions: past, present and future. Within those three time levels you can group different tenses and create these tense families: present tense, past tense and future tense. In addition, there is the conditional tense, the simple tense and the progressive tense family. Each of those tense families has four members. If you then combine each tense with a so called «auxiliary verb« (for example «could») you can make 115 tense forms of any transitive verb (a transitive verb requires a direct object, for example «raise taxes».)

So, why am I telling you all this? To cause confusion and frustration? Far from it. I'm simply trying to illustrate how complicated English grammar can be if you consider it from a theoretical point of view. Ask any native English speaker how many tenses there are in their mother tongue and you will get uncomprehending looks. Or better still try to list all the possible tense forms in your own native language. Believe me, it will take you some time and effort to complete this task. The thing is that we don't need to know all the theoretical details of a language if we want to use it correctly. We can simply learn the patterns by practising them. As so often Alan has used his weekend to create more tests for you — three of them focus on the tenses. Here are the questions and you'll see how you can improve your grammar skills within minutes:

ESL Test: English Tenses (1)
ESL Test: English Tenses (2)
ESL Test: English Tenses (3)

2004 — August 15
So August 15 is a remarkable day — firstly because the Olympic Games have started and secondly the english-test.net NetLog has been online exactly one year. Now our electronic diary contains 161 entries, which means Alan Townend has read and amended my writings 161 times and I'm grateful for his great support. Somehow last year I wrote about the profitability of our website and I mentioned that english-test.net yields a variety of benefits: There is the Google Adsense revenue which can be quantified easily — we can constantly track the exact Dollar amount our pages are bringing in. This amount has been going up and down ever since we opened our Adsense publisher account in September. I have gathered a lot of information about Adsense — the most interesting fact being that there are quite a number of websites that generate a couple of thousand Dollars each month with Google's advertising program. The next milestone on our road to financial success online is the 3 million page view mark. Before I go on about these numbers let me get back to the other type of benefits I receive from english-test.net. There are some values that cannot be measured in Dollars or Euros because they are not material ones and often have a long term effect. Imagine I had to pay for the training and coaching I'm getting from Alan and Slava — the truth is I would hardly be able to afford their services. That's why english-test.net is highly profitable for me and it's also the best project to invest my time and energy in because I know it will have excellent ROI (Return One Investment) rates during the next couple of years...