..... José Caetano Silva, Managing Partner of Talent Search, prophesies: “The foolish anti-colonialist attitude should be overcome and Spanish should be taught at schools.”

..... The Managing Partner of Talent Search believes that command of any language, in this case English, involves perfect comprehension, fluency and writing of the language. Because “the market is conquered by dominating in the field. And there language is of decisive importance.” In fact, a negotiator is above all selling an idea or product and, to be successful, cannot be inhibited about using a language in which he or she is not totally comfortable.

But here the difficulties and a somewhat unnatural selection begin, since fluency in a foreign language can only be achieved, for Caetano Silva, in schools that teach in that language. As very few parents can afford to pay to education at the foreign schools in Portugal (in the case of Lisbon, St. Julian’s for example), he admits that “those who have money can buy good English.”

Do you speak English? – In a country where there is a tendency to get by in various languages, fluency in a language makes a difference. In the case of English it should not be forgotten that, besides being the language of business, all the manuals, bibles and documentation that professionals from different areas encounter are written in that language.

Until the education system moves on from ideals to reality, it is essential to take advantage of existing possibilities: the exchange programmes such as Erasmus, for university students, and MBAs, for more advanced academic degrees, offer entrances in the language, essential to increase knowledge and fluency.

Then there is the specific vocabulary for each area, such as legal English in the case of lawyers. However, in this example, it will have to be the lawyers or specific companies themselves to make the investment, and not the official education system. For common mortals, also in the opinion of the Managing Partner of Talent Search, the courses offered by private institutions – if they are not taken merely to obtain a diploma, which is often the case – and an attitude of constant learning (reading books in the original, watching films without subtitles and using a dictionary to check each unknown word) may help to compensate for the lack of an education in an original culture.