The Callan Method for Business

Have your staff learn English at the Callan School, London

At the heart of the English-speaking world

English is the international language of commerce. And London is not only one of the world's great financial centres, but also the centre of the English-speaking world. The best place to learn a language is in the country where that language is spoken. So people from all over the world who want to move up in their careers come to London to learn English. In London there is a wide range of language-schools to choose from.

The language-school racket

Unfortunately, London has many substandard language-schools, and unless they are careful, students (or the bosses or parents who pay their fees) can find themselves wasting their money on incompetent teachers. The language-school business in Britain is largely unregulated. As a writer for the London magazine Time Out observed, “the self-appointed ‘principal’ of a language-school can cobble together a prospectus, syllabus and price-list overnight,” and be up and running within a few days. Sadly, because there are always new students arriving in London to learn English, it can take a while before the good language schools drive the bad ones out of business.

Professionals or charlatans?

Students who come to London to learn English often imagine that they will be taught by professional teachers. This is an illusion. Most people who teach English as a Foreign Language have only one qualification, the TEFL certificate. But as a TEFL course only takes a month to complete, the qualification is of little value. Fly-by-night outfits take advantage of TEFL to claim that their teachers are qualified professionals. But without TEFL, many more of them would have to close.

The Callan School solution

The Callan School is the largest private language school in London, and has operated from its present location on Oxford Street since 1983. The Callan School has a high reputation, which allows its students to enjoy peace of mind. The approach to the teaching of English at the Callan School is radically different from the approach of the TEFL establishment. At the Callan School, the students are taught according to the Callan Method. The Method is a rigorous and painstakingly designed system of instruction. The task of the teacher is not to prepare the lessons but to work through the Method books. This means that the teachers do not need to be qualified professionals. They just need to be able to use the Method correctly, and they can be trained to do so within five days. Many language-schools try to make out that their teachers are professionals. But the Callan School tells its students the truth: its teachers are not academic professionals, but the hard-working operatives of a sophisticated mechanism. And the Method is the most effective way of learning English on the market today. If you want your employees to learn English, there are many other language courses available. But the Callan School has one important advantage. The Method will save your staff time and therefore save your company money.

English for business, not ‘business English’

The Method does not teach ‘business English’. The reason for this is that there is no such thing. True, English, at a highly advanced level, does have specialised legal and technical vocabulary. But before such specialised vocabulary could be of any real use to students, they would need to have studied English for several years. So most of the time, ‘business English’ is either a piece of meaningless jargon – or, for many language schools and textbook publishers, a licence to print money. What business English actually means in the day-to-day world of work is nothing more than the ability to communicate effectively. This is the central emphasis of the Callan Method, where students learn English by speaking it.

The Callan philosophy

The Callan philosophy is a business philosophy, based on the principles of time and motion. The objective is to be systematic, getting the job done as efficiently as possible. A ‘no frills’ attitude avoids the time-wasting that goes on in other language schools, where students are sat in front of an old TV-show and told they are taking a class in ‘British life and culture.’ For companies wishing to teach their employees English, the Callan Method has been a natural choice. Back in the 1960s Olivetti and Hewlett-Packard were among the first multinationals to recognize its merits. Over the years, the dynamism of the Callan School, London, has helped make the Callan Method popular all over the world. In mainland Europe and on other continents, many schools which teach the Callan Method, like ‘Roman’s Empire’ in Radom, Poland, are used to dealing with corporate clients. There are now Callan Method schools in thirty-six countries. To find the nearest Callan Method school in your own country, please look at the links on this website.

Our track-record

Like any other business the Callan School has to be judged on results. Students can be prepared for the Cambridge First Certificate exam in two hundred hours of lessons, meaning that students at the Callan School learn English four times faster than students at the average language school. The pass rate of Callan School students for the Cambridge exams is far higher than the pass rate for those taking the Cambridge exams overall. After attending the required number of classes, students who fail their exams are given free lessons until they are successful. With results like these, the fees represent real value for money. And the high-quality service on offer puts the Callan School a world away from the disreputable end of the language-school market. The efficiency of the Method suits the needs of business. This is why the Callan School on Oxford Street is London’s most successful language school.