Meet our founder

Léonieke holds an academic master's degree in International Business Communication Studies and an academic bachelor's degree in Communication- and Information Sciences. Moreover, she's been Cambridge ESOL CELTA Certified since 2014, which she obtained in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. This certificate has the same international, educational value as an HBO-degree in Dutch higher education. Finally, she completed most of her second master's degree in Linguistics, which is a programme centring around developing English for Specific Purposes Training Services, and is currently in the process of writing a second master's thesis.

She helps adults to communicate more effectively in English in their target domain and offers ESP training services to clients who are intermediate up to advanced level users of the language, with specific needs and who work in a specific domain or context. Consequently, a needs assessment is always included in intakes as well as language aptitude tests. This way, all relevant information is collected to be analyzed and used for the design of high-quality, results-driven language and communication services.

The type of services she offers focus on acquiring specific, relevant occupational, or academic skills in standard English and help raise awareness about cultural matters and help them develop ways to express themselves while also demonstrating cultural sensitivity. She also helps them become more aware of how language use and choices may change the meaning, which is especially relevant at advanced levels (i.e. C1 and C2).

She also facilitate Cambridge Exam training courses and offer businesses a partnership in reaching communicative objectives in-company or remotely and offers services to:
– academic language centres: client satisfaction scores: 'good' to 'excellent'.
– businesses, i.e. corporate industries and nonprofits
– individuals

The training services she offers are of high-quality and result-driven but also offer immersion in the target language and culture in which differences between cultures and ways of doing things are addressed. This is particularly relevant when clients communicate with native speakers of English, and perhaps even more so when these native speakers do not speak another language besides English. Such native speakers might not be as culturally aware yet. Consequently, learning how to speak their language in a relatively similar way is recommended to communicate more effectively in such situations, especially when communicating with them.

However, English is also used as a lingua franca in various contexts nowadays and can even be considered to be everyone's language. A lingua franca is quite different from native or standard English. As more and more interaction takes place between non-native speakers of English, it is important to become aware of how culture affects how language is used and how communication can be somewhat effective without always being accurate. Even though English is used as a lingua franca, the training services she offers are usually and mostly focused on Standard English used for Specific Purposes.