The registration for Business Talk – Course B is now open.  It is a business-focused English program that trains people to develop their professional communication skills in English.

The course will start on Tuesday,  May 18 at CultureLink International’s conference room in Centreville, Rabat.  The group size is limited to 8 participants.  Please register now to reserve your place in the course.

We are pleased to announce that we now offer several Birkman® test packages that meet the differing needs of our clients – high school and college students, working professionals, managers and executives of businesses, and teams and groups.

If you are familiar with the Birkman® and its typical fee schedule, you’d know that all of our Birkman® packages are of good value.  For example, Birkman International, the creator and developer of Birkman Method® would charge a client $475 for an assessment and they provide one 90-minute feedback session.  With our Birkman® Test Professional Package at $299 per test, you would be getting a discount of $176 from us.

Moreover, with our new Birkman® Test Executive Package at competitive fee of $499, we not only provide a full, 60-minute feedback session, a standard practice by Birkman® certified professionals, but also a full 60-minute second session.  This ensures that the investment you make by taking the Birkman® gives you full benefits of receiving feedbacks with an in-depth analysis of your assessment result as well as guidance for applying it for your personal or professional development.

We are also offering a limited number of Birkman® Preview packages for $99 and Birkman® Student packages for $149 each month.  Both packages include access to the online Birkman questionnaire and the resulting 30-35 page self-explanatory Birkman Preview report with the essential Birkman® data and analysis report. The Student Package includes a 30-min. feedback session.

Go to Birkman® Pricing and Payment Options →

We are currently in the process of making some changes to our Birkman consulting programs. This is to make it more effective and to better serve the needs of our clients.  The previous package offer of Birkman® Consulting Program for Individual for $300 (USD) will discontinue and will be replaced by a range of programs that better suits the needs of diverse constituencies such as students and business professionals.

Our goal is to provide the highest value to our clients.  If you would like to take the Birkman, please contact us so that we can provide the specific service and program that meets your need.

We are still offering a limited number of Birkman® Test and Report Only package each month until we make final changes to our programs.  Thank you for your understanding.  Please contact us to inquire about all Birkman consulting options.

Our intercultural resource blog has been moved to a new location at Culturategic.com.  All posts I’ve previously written (plus new ones in the future) are now posted there.

I decided to do this after reviewing our web visitors’ information, my own content, and the future direction of the CultureLink business.  Culturategic will be my personal blog where I have more freedom to express my personal ideas and thoughts.  Though some of my posts were directly related to our CultureLink business, others weren’t. So I made this move to have a better focus for both CultureLink business site as well as my own intercultural blog. I will continue to share my thoughts in the new blog on cross-cultural leadership, management, strategy, and teamwork as well as my musings related to life and work in North Africa.

This new News & Events page will be devoted to sharing the latest news, development, and events of our company.  Thanks for visiting us and the interests you’ve shown on my blog.  Please go to Culturategic.com to read my latest intercultural thoughts.  You can also subscribe to the blog and receive my posts in your reader.

It looks like someone stole our idea of English Club and went ahead and started a similar thing.  The TGI Friday’s restaurant in Rabat just recently started a thing called Englsih Talk-Fest (See the flyer below).

Well, actually, I think it’s a good thing. It just shows you the need for this kind of thing in Morocco. It totally proves all my points in my previous post about our English Club. And I’m glad that it’s not happening at some language school (urgh, boring not the wildest place to have it!) but a popular restaurant.  And that’s the point.  Learning often takes place in a more relaxed, fun, and relational environment.

There need to be more and more of these opportunities to learn English to help our learning community in Morocco. So, kudos to TGI Friday’s! I hope the 60 DH meal is good too!

English Club volunteers and participants

We are currently developing a program called English Club here in Rabat. There are many students and professionals in our Moroccan communities who want to learn and improve their English. But the place to learn is generally limited to classrooms in schools. The reason is simple – this is a francophone country. From government and commerce to schools and media, French rules this country, even after 50 years of gaining independence from France.

The fact is that there are plenty of language schools in large cities such as Rabat and Casablanca that provide English courses, but not enough opportunities or environments where you can actually use English with real people. Even in these classes, how much can you improve your English in two 90-minute sessions per week with fifteen other students (if you are lucky) and only one teacher? Yes, they do practice with one another quite a bit, I hear from my friends who are teachers at these schools, especially in more advanced classes. But it’s not the same as actually speaking with native speakers of English. Moreover, there are not enough resources in English available in our communities to aid their language learning.

There is an enormous amount of intellectual and cultural resources available in the English language, but due to the strong emphasis on French, Moroccans in general have not been able to tap into these abundant and growing global resources and participate actively in the global community.

So, we recognize the need. Many friends of ours ask us for help. Thus, we are developing English Club, a warm, friendly community where you can practice English, participate in activities done in English, and also gain an opportunity to interact and develop friendship with English speakers from other countries and cultures. This is not a school or classroom thing (a. k. a. terribly boring and dry highly structured stuff). It’s about people, relationships, learning from one another, and growing together. So, this is the CultureLink idea of meeting this particular need in our community and serving our friends and neighbors.

So far, we’ve had three successful test-runs of English Club. Once we figure out the best format and means to run this, we will be offering it to the English learners in our community on a more regular basis. So stay tuned. It’s exciting stuff!

In May 2008, we sponsored an arts exhibition in Beni Mellal titled, “Story from Beni Mellal – Your Story through Their Eyes.” A group of international artists from U. K., Australia, Canada, and the U. S., who were traveling in Morocco stopped by Beni Mellal and worked on this project.

They took photos on location to express the beauty in Moroccan culture and people, and displayed these works at Beni Mellal Cultural Center.  It drew hundreds of local visitors and created a natural atmosphere of cross-cultural learning and friendship, both for the visiting artists and local residents of Beni Mellal.

We plan to continue to link up with people from various backgrounds and specialties and sponsor events that encourages cross-cultural learning and friendships.  This is why CultureLink International exists!  To help people connect, learn, and grow!!!