Financial English Newsletter

From Financial English/ACCA Global:
Cambridge Financial English at Siemens

As a blended learning course, the Cambridge Financial English programme offers students a mix of online study and face to face tuition with a teacher, tutor or mentor. Ideal for those balancing study with other commitments, blended learning is also an excellent way for employers to offer their staff expert, accredited, targeted tuition - as is currently the case in Germany where engineering giant Siemens is trialling the Cambridge Financial English programme for key staff.
Siemens is one of the world's largest companies, with over 120,000 employees in Germany alone. The international nature of Siemens' business means that excellent English skills are an important advantage, especially for the finance team, as James Schofield - Siemens training manager and tutor on the Cambridge Financial English programme – explains: 'All course participants are involved, directly or indirectly, with the management of Siemens' revenues. Some are IT specialists responsible for software which handles quarterly and year end closing, or which oversees Siemens' investments. Other students have accounting or control responsibilities, but all are likely to come across financial English terminology in some form or another.'
In order to fit the programme around work commitments, the course comprises 25 hours classroom based teaching, in groups of up to 20 students, and 75 hours online study. Having only launched in November 2010, James is finding that students are still getting used to the different approach that blended learning demands. 'Students prefer face to face tuition, but this is not possible – or cost-effective – as currently 10 of our 30 learners are located in the north of Germany,' he explains. 'As a result, we are offering Net Meetings every two months as an opportunity for feedback and discussion, and looking at other ways in which we can improve communication between groups and support online study.’
'From the employer's perspective, however, blended learning offers many advantages as it allows us to deliver a consistently high quality course to all employees wherever they are located, as they can study whenever they have access to an online computer.'
The course, designed for those who already speak reasonable English, develops the skills required to use English confidently in an accounting or finance environment: 'All those in our current group of 30 learners have been pre-selected according to their current English language ability and the relevance of the programme to their job,' comments James. 'Vocabulary expansion is particularly useful in this context, but the whole programme is very attractive– the material is relevant, high quality and well put together, and the classroom material is excellent, encouraging students to practise what they have learnt through plausible simulations and role plays.'