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 — October 11
This week will be a very «fast» one because we have a variety of different jobs to do. First, we'll develop an individual English language coaching program for the Mystery Shopping company that is going to hire us. Last week I gave each team member some kind of «Prova» — a talk in English to see what they are capable of doing, that is, how fast they are capable of learning and it turned out that with the exception of the accountant all of them speak very good English. So far I haven't spoken to the company's programmer as well as the owner but based on what I have been told the former regards himself as a beginner and the latter likes to know more than he wants to admit.
That means we will have to organize two groups — an advanced one consisting of 4 - 6 participants and a beginners one made up of the remaining 2 - 3 team members. In addition we will have to create an individualized training program that provides a sufficient level of flexibility and implements a good mix of methods and activities. It's our goal to prepare the company for an expansion of their operations into European markets rather than to teach them English. Each of the course participants has a specific set of responsibilities within the team and it follows that they need to develop individual English language skills. One person will be speaking on the phone to prospective clients and test shoppers whereas the programmer and accountant will need to be capable of understanding written texts in English. Also, we have to integrate the English language training into the company's operations — it won't be possible to gather all the team members for 1 - 2 hours in class room because they can't afford to stop their work. That's why we will use a variety of methods — for example one of our trainers will call the company at random and speak to them in English taking notes as to their responses. In addition we will send each course participant assignments via email and we will use our forum to communicate with each of them separately as well as with the entire group. All of this requires a lot of planning and structuring but I'm sure the results will be amazing.

2004 — October 10
As of today you finally can access detailed information about the TOEIC test because Slava and his team have implemented the contents of our TOEIC site into english-test.net. To view the new section please click here: TOEIC Section. which obviously is a German domain name — after all part of the english-test.net members still live in Leipzig, a medium sized city about 1,5 hours south of Berlin. With TOEIC being the most important English language exam in the world we thought it would be a good idea to write explanations for you in three different languages — English, German and Russian. To my knowledge english-test.net is the first site to offer such a feature. In addition to these comprehensive TOEIC information materials you can now also purchase an ebook called TOEIC-Secrets — probably the one and only manual that reveals very specific instructions on how to achieve a high score in the TOEIC test. If you have any questions regarding these new features you can contact us any time here on the forum.

2004 — October 09
Dave Sperling is the pioneer in the Internet ESL industry — in 1995 Dave's ESL Cafe opened its doors and has ever since attracted hundreds of thousands of ESL enthusiasts from all around the world. With one of categories called «esl-cafe» it was high time for us to write an article about Dave's ESL Cafe It describes the reasons why www.eslcafe.com has reached such a tremendous level of popularity covering such issues as viral marketing through ICQ and Hotmail as well as the importance of being at the right place at the right time. You will also find some comments about Dave's ESL Cafe made by people on Alexa.com — Amazon's web directory. Why should I tell you everything here in the Blog when it's all in the article ;-) ?

2004 — October 08
Have you ever heard of Mystery Shopping? No? Well, it's an emerging industry that concentrates on increasing the quality of customer and employee management. At least, that is my attempt to define this relatively new business service. Let me give you an example of what a Mystery Shopping company does: If you run a retail sales business or a restaurant your company's success largely depends on how well your service personnel communicates with your customers. In order to test the service quality of your staff you can hire a Mystery Shopping company which sends test customers to your shop or whatever business you run. Those test shoppers are like some kind of actors who pretend purchase a product or service from your company while evaluating how your personnel treats them. After the sales talk is finished they complete a checklist with the result and submit those data to you. OK; this is a very simplified explanation — you can imagine that in reality this process is much more complex than that. Why am I telling you all this? Because we one of our new clients is a German based Mystery Shopping company that wants to expand their operations into the UK and other European markets. They have hired us to design an individual English language-coaching program for their team and this assignment is an excellent opportunity for us to proof that we are a special team indeed.