Maripaz had landed a job as a customer service representative in a hotel. She’d completed her training for the new position and had been helping out at the front desk and concierge for a couple of weeks now. She really enjoyed working with the public and being able to help the guests with their enquiries.

One of the requirements of employment by the hotel chain was that she had to be bilingual in Spanish and English which was no problem for her as she was Hispanic and had always learned English as a second language. However, she found speaking to so many different people about such diverse topics a little more hard work than she thought she would. It was one thing speaking English in classes with familiar subject matters and knowing you’d be corrected if you made a mistake, but a very different matter altogether dealing with the public, especially when there were so many different accents and unfamiliar questions. She knew that the more time she spent speaking to people and the more she learned her job, she would gradually become accustomed to it, but for the initial stages of her new job she needed a bit of extra help!

She enrolled in an intensive one-to-one language course with a native English teacher to help her get used to the accent and learn colloquialisms as well as more formal terminology. The teacher geared her lessons around the hotel environment and the things that Maripaz could expect to come across in her job. These lessons improved her confidence no end, and the worry of being on unfamiliar territory when she was helping English speaking guests soon abated.

With good feedback from the guests and recommendations from satisfied customers, Maripaz’s bosses were happy with her conduct and Maripaz was able to look forward to a promising career in the hospitality industry!