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British Closed Nuclear Centres Partnership |
English Courses at the University of Birmingham , November 2006.
For the first time of CNCP's multi-year cooperation with British universities, we organized a new training course in Birmingham. Our first effort turned out to be very successful. A group of 14 people, including specialists from closed nuclear cities, representatives of business support structures in Snezhinsk, Ozersk, Seversk, Zheleznogorsk, Sarov, Kharkov, Tashkent and Alma-Aty attended a two-week course in Business English Language Development & Commercialization. At first sight, it seems that 2 weeks are not enough to develop communication skills in English. But CNCP's training specialist Chris Bailey and Course Director Cathryn Overall managed to plan the training course most effectively. The course comprised 10 theoretical lectures and presentations related to commercialization of R&D, project management, intellectual property protection, marketing, accounting, nuclear technologies and physiology. It is a well-known fact that along with theoretical knowledge, it is essential to develop practical communication skills with native speakers. We had three specialists teaching the course, including Mike Loughlin, Jennifer Metcalfe, and Clare Williams . These are marvelous teachers with multi-year experience working with foreign students. The practical course was targeted at developing communication skills, presentation abilities, and understanding of intercultural aspects in business negotiations. At the most memorable training the participants were divided into several groups, with each group getting a description of specific features in the behavior of a certain culture. During business negotiations it was necessary to demonstrate the peculiarities of the hierarchy and psychology, typical of this culture. It was certainly very helpful to see ourselves on a tape when individual presentations were made after practical trainings with Jennifer and Clare, who helped us diligently master the basics of oratory and presentation skills. Once again, we got proof that it is insufficient to be a good specialist or a scientist, as you need to be able to present yourself and your idea effectively. But that was just a part of the agenda. The course organizers also thought about out cultural program. If you did not visit medieval castles of Norman kings, you did not see England. We were able to tour one of the most famous castles in Warwick, located on the bank of the River Avon. The castle has a multi-century history and it preserved its look from the 13th century. With Stratford-on-Avon being only two hours away from Birmingham, we could not have possibly missed the chance to go there. This is the motherland of William Shakespeare, where on Henly Street you can still see the house, where the writer was born and lived. And a tour of famous Oxford already became a tradition. Birmingham is now also very popular. In the early days, the British thought of Birmingham as of an industrial and dirty city. But it has changed for the last 30 years, due to implementations of new investment programs. In particular, to establish a famous shopping center Bull Ring in the city, private investments to the amount of about 500 million GBP (about 1 billion USD) was attracted. Birmingham has received the status of Europe's biggest convention centre. About 180 international exhibits and conventions take place here annually. This is a small list of interesting facts about Birmingham's background, which Mike Loftus from the City Planning and Restructuring Department shared with us. In general, the English Course in the University of Birmingham made its impact not only on the development of communication skills, but also helped with informational exchange and expansion of the participants' business contacts. We hope that such intensive courses of business English will be repeatedly held by CNCP program. |
