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Essential Learning

Foreign language skills a must in global marketplace

BY BOB SHEMELIGIAN

As business and trade become more globalized, the executives with the competitive edge will be those with the requisite cultural and language skills to match their business acumen.

Some education companies are taking advantage of this by offering language education tailor-made for American executives. One, a Web-based tutoring program produced by Chicago company InterLangua, brings language tutors to the desktop of anyone who wants to quickly build second-language skills.

"Our InterLangua service turns your computer into a one-on-one language tutorial," said Peter Spevacek, the digital, face-to-face tutoring service's founder and chief executive officer. "It's more efficient and more economical than other tutoring services simply because nothing is more convenient than sitting down at your computer."

PHOTO BY MIKE STOTTS

PHOTO BY MIKE STOTTS
Chinese business cards of clientele of the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News are shown in the newspaper's office in Chinatown Plaza.

PHOTO BY MIKE STOTTS
The April 10 cover of the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News. Many executives are taking advantage of foreign language programs to enhance skill sets in a changing business world.

InterLangua is also effective, Spevacek said.

"With tapes, it's all about memorizing vocabulary. You really don't learn the language until you speak it for yourself," Spevacek said.

InterLangua's growing client base, which includes students at Duke University and employees of the World Bank and Nextel International, see, hear and speak live with tutors who teach through full-motion video, audio and whiteboard.

"We do not use Skype (a software that allows telephone calls via the Internet), which has limited video capacity," Spevacek said.

InterLangua was launched in early 2006 when it began offering a Spanish instructional program utilizing tutors who live and work in Guatemala. Early this year, the service began a Chinese program with tutors who live and work in Shenzhen, China. To implement this program, Spevacek built a fiber-optic backbone.

"Anyone who does business in China knows about the problems with the Chinese Internet. It crashes constantly," InterLangua co-founder Susan Mravca said.

Today, InterLangua has scores of corporate, academic and individual clients throughout the United States and Canada, each of whom spend an average of two to three hours a week being tutored in Spanish or Chinese at their personal computers.

"You don't have to be a big company to use this service," Spevacek said. "All you need is a computer and a high-speed connection."

The high-speed connection helps maintain video quality, because students are not only learning a language, but also the proper facial expressions that go with it.

"The tutors converse with the clients in real time, and the reason why our service is so unique is that the they actually see and talk to each other," Mravca said. "They actually see each other's facial expressions and this helps the client learn the language."

So far InterLangua doesn't have many clients in the Southwest. Nevertheless, Spevacek said he thinks his service could benefit many potential corporate clients because of the growth of Hispanics and Asians in many business sectors, particularly in Las Vegas. Also, more Nevada corporations, particularly gaming operators, are conducting overseas trade.

"It makes sense for those in business to add more language skills to help them trade across cultures," Spevacek said. "Even if you don't speak fluent Spanish, improving communication skills will help one forge better relations."

Eddie Escobedo, founder and publisher of Las Vegas-based El Mundo, the oldest and largest Hispanic audited newspaper in Southern Nevada, agrees with Spevacek.

"It never hurts to improve language skills," Escobedo said. "Consider that the Hispanic community in Southern Nevada is now over 600,000, and is growing five times faster than the national average."

Escobedo said this growing group represents a loyal customer base that spends $20 million daily in Southern Nevada alone.

"We may not speak a lot of English, but we spend mucho dinero," Escobedo said with a smile.

The Asian-American population in Southern Nevada is neither as large nor as fast-growing as the Hispanic segment. But Asian community leaders note their numbers are growing and they work in various business segments including banking, real estate and retail.

"Many of us are attorneys and physicians," said Helen Hsueh, publisher and CEO of the Las Vegas Chinese Daily News, which publishes daily and has a circulation of more than 20,000.

Hsueh said many Asian-Americans have moved to Southern Nevada from California in recent years to seek jobs and more affordable homes.

"We are hard workers," said Hsueh, who added that a language-tutoring program will help enable more communication and trade in businesses owned by those who speak English and Chinese as first languages.

"I can tell you Chinese is an extremely difficult language for some to learn," Hsueh said. "Different words have more than one meaning and because we have more than 50,000 characters in our alphabet.

"It took me 12 years to learn how to speak just one sentence," she added with a laugh.

Bob Shemeligian is a freelance writer for the Business Press. E-mail questions and comments to mward@lvbusinesspress.com.

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