Company Information

Welcome to Business Talen Rotterdam BV

Herman Groenewegen established language institute Business Talen Rotterdam BV in 1988. After high school he studied French language and literature at Leiden and soon started to provide business-oriented language training.

“My duties include leading the institute, marketing, advertising, giving Dutch language courses and supervising the teachers. I am also responsible for selecting the teachers. Besides expertise – a minimum level of HBO but preferably an academic background – the following are most important in this profession: a flexible attitude, an open and unprejudiced approach, the ability to explain well and to listen carefully, a desire to become acquainted with the wishes of the customer, a willingness to develop extra materials that meet the needs of the customer, and of course a friendly, welcoming and, above all, interesting personality that can engage in good conversation.
In the first interview that I conduct with a candidate I like to feel immediately at home with the prospective teacher. The idea is that if I feel comfortable, then the customer will too. Giving lessons is in the first instance all about human contact. Experience comes with time, but an unpleasant personality one can never change.
The teachers that I take on, are almost always native speakers. The advantage of this is that the whole lesson can be given in the target language and the customer is therefore continually busy with the language he or she is learning. A native speaker also has access to in-depth knowledge of his or her country and culture, from which the course participant can later benefit in their foreign contacts and which eases interaction.
I think that it is possible to learn every language, but the difficulties increase the further the target language is from the mother tongue. That can be due to grammar, the sounds of the language, vocabulary, syntax or sentence melody. The challenge for the teacher is to provide insight into those difficult areas and to present them in an apparently simple manner. For the person taking the course it is above all a question of keeping going and of not quitting. Perseverance is essential when learning a foreign language.
When learning a foreign language, all sorts of non-language aspects play a role. Does one have confidence? Are you ashamed of mistakes? (this is, however, inherent in learning a foreign language). Does the customer feel well in general? Did he/she just have a bad day? Is there a threat of redundancy? What is the home situation like? If the person taking the course shows that he is in some sort of a difficult situation, the teacher cannot ignore that completely and blithely get on with the lesson. A teacher has to have empathy and should – up to a certain point – take the customer’s personal situation into account.
The best study results are achieved by following lessons regularly, without long gaps in between. It is also better to study for a half hour each day than three hours on the day before a lesson, and to dare to use the language and not be scared of making mistakes. Course participants can often do more than they think! It is just like skating: you can’t learn it from the sidelines, you have to go out onto the ice and you learn it by falling and getting up again.
In order to gain control of a language from level 0 one usually needs 75 lessons of 1,5 hours. However, I normally advise course starters to take a package of 25 lessons of 1,5 hours. This enables them to establish a good basis and to get a feeling for what it is like to learn a new language. The motivation for the next series of lessons lies with the participants themselves and this is how it should be.
During the free introductory lesson of 1,5 hours the course participant forms an excellent picture of what Business Talen Rotterdam BV has to offer and the rest of the course will fully come up to expectations.”