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 — September 25
You probably already know that Germany is a federal republic, which means that there are 16 so-called federal states each of which has its own parliament. Last week the citizens of the state where I live had to elect a new government. Well, they did and now almost 10% of our parliamentARY members are right-wing nationalists who claim that if we want to get more jobs, the first thing we have to do is send home those foreigners who are unemployed for more than 3 months. You see, when there is an economic crisis and people are forced to change their habits many of them try to resist any form of change. They spend all their time and energy trying to find explanations why they are not living the life they want to and they always come up with reasons that point the finger at others — never at themselves. So, instead of concentrating on the new job opportunities the Internet offers for example they would rather get the foreigners out of the country hoping that this would generate enough jobs for the many unemployed especially in the East of Germany. If you go back some 60 years in German history you will find parallels and IT doesn't take much of a brain to work out which path that eventually leads to. That's why I suggest we should think about how we can get our share of the IT cake that is still growing every day.

2004 — September 24
This week we almost reached the 2000 visits mark. That means our web pages were accessed almost 2000 times on September the 21. It's amazing to see how word of mouth works on the Internet because when we first started our project in early 2003 we just intended to create a small collection of interactive English tests for the English classes we were teaching throughout Germany. Then, when Alan had written his first tests we wanted to show the site to some of our students and at first the response was hardly overwhelming. In the beginning the tests were hosted on our company website www.english-team.com and there was no graphic interface or navigation panel — just a couple of text links on a gray background. Several weeks had passed after we put the tests online when Slava pointed out that already a few hundred people had used the tests. That was very surprising news because we hadn't done any promotion for the test pages whatsoever. It took us a while to realize that people had started finding our pages through Google, which had indexed some of them. Now, one and a half years later we are exchanging ideas about possible promotion activities with Cleverlearn. In addition there are quite a number of changes we are going to make to the site BY the end of 2004 so the autumn months will be very interesting.

2004 — September 21
It's amazing to see how Google connects people from all around the world: You search for a specific piece of information — you have a question and you know that another person probably has got the answer and all you have to do is find that particular webpage that contains exactly what you need. That's why I try to cover as many different topics here in the ESL blog as possible. A few days ago you could read a very short introduction to the Callan Method and now our statistics show that this entry has already attracted quite a number new users. This fact should be reason enough to recap some features of the Callan method: It's a system that enables people to learn English about four times faster than through any conventional method. As a matter of fact, a lot of language teaching companies such as Berlitz claim to have developed their own method but if you compare Berlitz, Inlingua or Linguarama with Callan, you will find that the last mentioned is by far the more efficient. It certainly is a good idea to provide more detailed information about the Callan method for you on our website...

2004 — September 20
To some extent the British low cost Airline EasyJet is the reason for my current stay in Berlin: I'm teaching English to a group of young people who want to apply for a job at Schoenefeld International Airport. In May 2004 EasyJet started operating flights from Berlin to London, Newcastle, Liverpool and Bristol as well as a number of other European cities proclaiming that Schoenfeld will become the new commercial hub of EasyJet for Germany. So, EasyJet brings jobs and economic growth to East Berlin and you are benefitting from this development too because part of the money we are generating by teaching English to the service personnel at Schoenefeld Airport will be re-invested into this site. For example, you soon will be able to listen to almost all of the correct answers to Alan Townend's tests. In addition you will be able to gain access to a variety of English language software programs, vocabulary building tools and short stories as well as TOEFL and TOEIC test preparation systems.

By the way I like the name «EasyJet» because it's easy to pronounce and remember. It consists of two words that are used in English as well as in German which helps increase the company's popularity in Germany even faster.