Business courses in Malta

According to Roger Bugeja, School Director at EF International Language Schools in St Julians – which has offered executive training for the last five years – schools are seeing a positive outcome from their efforts. He recounts that Malta offers an experience "that enlightens one's life. Once [clients] come to our school, they return. Many of our executive and corporate clients specifically request the EF Malta school."

Rebecca Brincat at BELS in Gozo agrees with this sentiment. "Our school offers the client a quality learning environment with all of the up-to-date learning and living facilities, in a setting where they can relax and slow down their daily fast pace," she says.

While Malta might be more laid-back than other study destinations, the courses are as professional and up-to-date as elsewhere. Many language schools incorporate meetings with fellow native professionals or site visits to relevant industry outlets into their programmes, and bespoke programmes might also be available. Louiseanne Mercieca of English Language Academy in Sliema states that this is one of the school's most important selling points: "English Language Academy prides itself on offering a very personalised service and tailor-made courses as and when requested."

Similarly, at MSD International School of English in St Paul's Bay, Jotham Scerri-Diacono, Head of School, says that students enrol on their business programmes because of the "individual attention and tailor-made courses".

Most class sizes for business programmes remain small and "concentrated". Lisa Audino at Linguatime School of English in Sliema gives a maximum class size of six students for these types of courses, but she says, "We prefer to have an average of three." She says that in the last three years, demand for professional training courses at their school has begun to noticeably pick up. "We believe this is due to the fact that English has become the international language in the boardroom and an increasing number of executives are realising that their lack of fluency in English is putting them at a great disadvantage in the multinational business world."

Linguatime aims to teach targeted knowledge and skills to its professional clients. Typical training programmes will cover giving presentations, negotiation language and strategy, cultural differences in business, report writing, telephone skills and social English.

At NSTS English Language Institute in Gzira, key skills are also an integral component of courses. Group business English tuition with weekly start dates was launched three years ago to complement the one-to-one programmes already on offer. Kathleen Jablonski at the school explains that clients are trained "to talk about facts and figures in a business language, to give presentations and exchange information". She adds, "Clients like the social contact, meetings and to exploit the language of negotiation."

Western European nationalities have so far tended to dominate the enrolment mix on the majority of business programmes in Malta, but Jablonski notes an emerging trend at NSTS of recruitment from farther afield. "Such courses are very popular with Germans, French and Italians in our school," she confirms. "Emerging markets include Russia and the occasional Japanese student."