In case you're curious, this article was written in English in both versions of loba.com. “Why would you do that?” - you may ask. I’m glad you asked! So follow me down the rabbit hole and I’ll explain.
Hello, my name is…
My first ever English teacher was named Steve, and “how to introduce myself” was one of the first topics I learned. I was in first grade, so around five or six years old, but I had already started to learn English from other sources, such as non-subtitled films, games on an old Sinclair computer and from the 80s version of language apps: audio tapes. After that, I had lessons in school, but most of my knowledge came from movies, computer games where I had to read and write in English, and just by talking to English natives from both sides of the pond. This mix of formal and informal teaching made English almost a natural second language.
But where’s all this going? Where’s the tea?
The “tea”, as the hip young folks say, is that I really thought that a medium or very acceptable level of English was the norm throughout the country, especially among the younger generations. So, it came as a surprise when I found out it wasn’t the case, even among a group of young people from tech, marketing and design fields. A few people struggled with English and had little or no experience in conversational English. The main reason for this was that there wasn’t a need for it.
Now what?
Not now, but a while back, LOBA acknowledged this as an opportunity to improve and grow our English-speaking ranks. We hired professional tutors and provided lessons for those who needed it. But the team went further and those with better levels made themselves available to help their co-workers.
We followed this commitment to ensure that our understanding of English was at the level we wanted to be, excellent. This was key to our internationalisation strategy, or internationalization with a z for our American friends.
Today, we can proudly say that our efforts are showing results, and those who struggled before are now able to share their work and knowledge in English.
What about the accent?
There are people from different nationalities at LOBA, but none of them have English as their first language, so having a bit of an accent is natural. The way we see it, our accent is flavour, it's that little bit of extra spice that makes it sound like us and not like everyone else.
We're proud of our accent, which makes us sound like LOBA and makes us fierce, with an accent.
