Tag

As an organisation, Countdown recognises that people across the whole organisation can benefit from upskilling in language, literacy, communication and numeracy. It has been great working with people in the Countdown Support Office over the last couple o

Over the last couple of years, we have helped hundreds of medical professionals develop their language skills and prepare for the OET test. We are running w

Living with a broken hand has given Nick a real insight into what it’s like to live (and work) with low levels of writing skills. In this short video, he reflects on some of the changes he has had to make at work and also on his recent experience

Choosing an online dictionary Online dictionaries are very useful tools when writing and reading and there are some really good ones out there. Go for a learner dictionary – this will be more useful and give you more detailed information about usage. Here are some tips on how to choos

Write and Improve Learner Orientated Assessment is the sort of assessment that happens in class and by teachers all the time and so rather than resulting in a formal assessment report, it feeds directly into the learning that is going on right at the moment. We really like “Write

OK, they  sound a bit pretentious but Grice’s Maxims are incredibly useful and they are four principles of communication that we keep coming back to them when we are working with learners in the workplace. Here they are: The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibl

Work as a police officer is demanding in terms of communication skills – probably more demanding than a lot of  police applicants realise.  Studying at Royal New Zealand Police College is intense and there is Policing and legal knowledge to learn during that t

  What is the Occupational English Test? Occupational English Test is an international English language test that assesses speaking, reading, listening and writing skills of healthcare professionals. The key benefit over IELTS is that it is contextualised around communication skil

So many businesses are still unaware that there is funding available to help them develop the language, literacy and numeracy skills of their employees. We have Workplace Literacy Funding and often there is no invoiced cost for training eligible employees. It is als

Nick recently attended the Symposium held at the University of Waikato and ran a workshop on addressing the needs of employees who speak English as an additional language in a workplace literacy setting. We shared a number of lesson plans and classr