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.