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The Covid-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on life as we know it, changing almost every aspect of day to day life. Great challenges bring great opportunities, and there are many who are leveraging the current situation: some completely legitimately, some less so.

One of the things that I have noticed is the huge rise in people offering “coaching” services, whether to help companies develop a business plan in the face of the pandemic, to assist with business continuity, to save your firm, to help individuals adjust their life to the ‘new normal’, or a hundred other examples.

Many of these offers come from experienced, qualified professionals – but a huge number seem to be from people with little to no experience, who are taking of advantage of the fact that coaching is, more often than not, an unregulated area and that almost anyone can call themselves a coach.

At the VICI we’ve always been very clear about our preference for “coaching” over “tutoring”. So in the face of this growing number of people also claiming to offer high-quality coaching services (and potentially diluting the impact of the word), you might be forgiven for wondering why we don’t change our terminology and say that we do something else instead – tutoring, for example.

It’s an interesting question… but we’re committed to coaching.

Why?

It is quite simple. We believe that:

Tutors teach the rules of a language and ‘hold their students’ hands’ along the way. So you learn a bunch of stuff but what remains when you are on your own? Not a lot. You will always need a tutor. When the tutor goes; so does the expertise.

A coach, on the other hand, expects his/her clients to one day say: ‘That was great, thank you, I don’t need you any longer. I am confident and now feel that I can do this on my own.’ A coach creates independent learners.

The reality is that becoming fluent in a foreign language is hard. It takes dedication and a genuine desire to learn. And I’m proud that The VICI’s coaching staff are highly trained and experienced native speakers, passionate about what they do, and truly committed to helping their students achieve their objectives.

So when yet another “coach” Inboxes me on LinkedIn with an offer to change my life, revolutionise my business or teach me something in 2 weeks, I wonder if each of them plans to bring that same passion, drive and commitment to the table. And, if not, I’m confident I won’t continue hearing from them for very long!

To learn more about The VICI and our commitment to excellence, arrange a call with one of our friendly language experts, and start your learning journey today – learn@thevici.com or
01635 444 24.

by Nathalie Danon

by Nathalie Danon

Academy Director

Nathalie is the award winning linguist & entrepreneur behind the VICI Language Academy and VICI Language Dynamics. Her success in helping people discover and learn new languages has earned her the moniker ‘the Jamie Oliver of Languages’
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