English as a lingua franca.
Is that what it really is?
Of course, also Spanish is a widely spread and spoken language, especially in LatAm, but in some situations we must realize that being fluent in English is extremely helpful.
And sometimes even required!
Some days ago, the British Council and Trabajando.com, published alarming statistics about the level of English of Chilean professionals, emphasizing that about every fourth job, and that is a quarter, required knowledge of the English language.
Nevertheless, the Chilean reality demonstrates that 80 % of the professionals in fact only has an insufficient level in this area.
Besides, 55% of young people had to admit that they are not able to have a fluent conversation in English, while 91% of them indeed stated that English is relevant and essential for their professional development.
For the future it is estimated that by 2020, 3 of every 4 jobs, so 75% will require you to be bilingual.
Two Chilean startups in conjunction with EF Chile are now addressing this problem by launching an interesting solution. These two brilliant startups are Sensication, founded by Gonzalo Torrealba and José Miguel Calderón, and iKwest, also founded by Gonzalo Torrealba and his partner Heiko Linn to develop cell phone technology for big companies.
Two dynamic games for school as well as university students, called “SchoolTwist” and “UTwist”, which aim at motivating young people to participate in an entertaining competition.
Be ambitious, because competing is definitely worth it because the winner gets to chose a friend and head off to a school of EF in the United States or Canada for two whole weeks to learn English.
How it works
“The Twist”, as it is called, is a competition which is played in pairs or teams of 4 people. The aim of this interactive contest is to integrate knowledge, technology and entertainment.
During a certain period of time the participants must master different challenges, such as answering questions concerning different areas, taking a photo in a specific place, writing a small history, recognizing places or cities and many more. All this is done online.
But for the leading 25 teams it will turn into a mixture of geocaching and a treasure hunt, because you will then always use your actual geographic location to find and solve the tasks, moving from once place to the next. Via GPS, the player’s position is permanently monitored,so you can see in real time your own position on the ones of your competitors on Google Maps.
This is even a great way to strengthen team work!
All challenges must be completed by one or more members of the team in order to score points for every single one of the challenges.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op9WkOCqK6M[/youtube]
How to get started
The teams with the highest scores will compete in the grand final, with the possibility of winning the journey to the US or Canada. To win this final they must complete a circuit of geo-located points, so the creators.
All the teams have to be registered for the competition and create their users on the respective website. Via email or social networks they will then be receiving the respective challenges every week.
No doubt, this is such a great opportunity for those who wish to belong to the percentage of Chileans who DO speak English and who want to experience a different lifestyle abroad.
