Learning and development is only one of the many competing priorities that Human Resources (HR) managers face. Fortunately, though, there are some easy-to-follow guidelines that can help HR professionals assess the quality of their current English training programs and, if necessary, bring in more effective, efficient, and innovative tools to help their employees develop their language skills.

By Dr. Katharine B. Nielson –Another question I get asked all the time is how long it takes to learn a language. And my answer–which no one likes–is “it depends.” But there are no easy answers to this question, because it really does depend on so many different things, from how much time you have […]

By Dr. Katharine B. Nielson –As anyone who’s ever tried to learn a language can attest, it’s not easy. I don’t know how many times I’ve had people tell me that they are “bad” at learning languages, citing the fact that they’d spent four years of high school or college learning Spanish or French, with […]

Last week, I wrote about what makes learning a language hard and pointed out that using data on word difficulty from the language learning application Duolingo is not particularly credible. Duolingo relies on gamification and translation to “teach” learners decontextualized words and sometimes useless phrases such as, and I am not making this up, “the […]

By Dr. Katharine B. NielsonIt is hard to accurately write about scientific research for the mass market, and journalists regularly make mistakes. I don’t think, however, that explains what happened last month at Business Insider. Not only did Mark Abadi publish a factually-inaccurate piece about how hard it is to learn English, he relied on […]

Even for the most advanced English learners, there’s one skill area that often goes neglected in both classroom and online settings: writing. Improving one’s writing skills is incredibly difficult and requires consistent practice—especially in a second language—so learners tend to shy away from tackling it head on. Yet for English learners who need to use […]

In this two-part blog series, we’re sharing our best practices to design and launch an effective English training program for your team. Now that you’ve established what your organization needs and how you’ll measure the results, it’s time to consider the learning program itself in more detail. At the core of every Voxy course is […]

Preparing to launch an English training program for your team can be daunting, especially if you need to implement it at scale for a large organization. With so many logistics to consider—and most likely, ambitious KPIs to reach—it can be difficult to know where to start. Voxy has enabled companies of every size to develop […]

“The need for innovation is staggering, the need for impact is staggering.” —Eva Hasset, Executive Director of the International Institute of Buffalo Last month, Voxy CEO Paul Gollash spoke on a panel at the Welcoming Economies Convening in Syracuse, NY, an event that brings together a network of trailblazers and industry leaders in the emerging […]