Why effective persuasion begins with common ground—not contradiction As a single father to my 15-year-old daughter, Ally, I have had to establish clear rules and boundaries from the time she was very young. One of those rules concerned bedtime. Naturally, the appropriate bedtime changed as she grew older, but the principle remained the same: she […]
The Surprising Challenge of Career Progression For many professionals, career progression follows a predictable path. You start by developing technical expertise. You learn the systems, processes, tools and methodologies required to do your job well. Over time, your knowledge grows, your confidence increases, and eventually you become the person others turn to when they need […]
Having worked as an executive communication coach for almost a decade, I have provided confidential and personalised coaching to executives operating in high-stakes settings, including parliamentary and senate hearings, regulatory meetings, boardroom discussions, media-facing situations, and complex stakeholder engagements. In these environments, communication is not simply about speaking “good English”. It is about sustaining clarity […]
If you speak with any ESL teacher long enough, a familiar pattern emerges:they know pronunciation matters, they want to teach it more confidently, yet they rarely feel equipped to do so. After seventeen years working in ELICOS as a pronunciation and fluency specialist — training hundreds of teachers in Australia and abroad, and developing several […]
How to Teach English Pronunciation Creatively (and Confidently) By Patrick Hayeck — Founder & Director of ESLAN, CEO of SCOTS English College Many teachers avoid pronunciation because they fear offending students or don’t know where to start. Here’s how to teach it creatively and confidently—and why it’s a moral obligation to help learners be understood. […]
Are you accidentally saying “estop” instead of stop? Or maybe “espanish” instead of Spanish? If so, don’t worry — you’re not alone. This pronunciation issue is especially common among Spanish speakers and learners whose first languages don’t allow words to begin with /s/ + consonant clusters, like st, sp, or sk. But the good news […]
Hey there, ESLAN Fan!Are you sick of translating from your first language word by word every time you speak English? Tired of feeling stuck, slow, or scared to open your mouth? I get it. I’ve been there—and it sucks. I know exactly what it feels like to be lost in conversation, to not understand what’s […]
Have you ever listened to native English speakers and thought their speech had a special rhythm — something musical? That’s because of sentence stress. Sentence stress is what gives English its rhythm. In every sentence, some words are stressed — said louder, longer, or higher — while others are spoken more softly or quickly. Learning […]
Watch the French President, Emmanual Macron make a speech in English and learn about some of the most common errors made by French people when they speak English. Consonant ‘h’ French speakers often have difficulty pronouncing the English consonant /h/ at the beginning of words because the /h/ sound is generally silent in French. As […]
Did you know that the letters ‘T’ and ‘D’ don’t always sound like /t/ or /d/ in native English speech? The way we pronounce them depends on the sounds that come before or after them. If you learn and apply the five pronunciation rules below, your spoken English will sound much more fluent and natural—especially […]
