With the London School of International Communication, “We’re diversifying our range of courses and offering training that can help both native and non-native speakers of English to work more effectively internationally,” director, Cathy Wellings, told The PIE News.

“It’s a very crowded marketplace and there is a lot of pressure on price”

“So we are going beyond language skills,” she continued. “We’re offering much broader intercultural, communication and leadership training which helps people to solve the challenges of working across cultures.”

“For example in a negotiation skills course we will address non-verbal communication, the process of a negotiation, how to ’tune in’ to the other side and strategies for adapting the home country style and approach.”

LSIC offers in-company training as well as a range of public courses launching at the end of January.

The move follows a year of tough market conditions in the UK’s ELT sector, prompting widespread discussion about the need to diversify its offering beyond English language courses.

At the British Council’s SIEM conference, for example, panellists noted that agents are increasingly seeing students looking to English language as an enabler, rather than a core product.

“It’s a very crowded marketplace and there is a lot of pressure on price,” said Wellings.

She agreed that there is a need to diversify and said that the launch of The London School of International Communication is a natural progression from the professional courses offered at the London School of English.

“Another reason is that students are coming to London with higher levels of English, particularly from the corporate market,” she noted.

“So we need to offer more than pure language skills and these practical skills-based programmes are a perfect complement to what we already do.”