Please hold the line

Does phoning in English make you nervous? Perhaps you’re worried that you don’t understand the other person? That needs training. Grab your headset, go to www.spiegel.de and test whether you’ve understood the callers.

A handy dictionary

Do you know the difference between Hispanic and Latino? And what about the difference between England, Great Britain, The United Kingdom and the British Isles? Or the difference between Persian and Iranian? They’re quite tricky, aren’t they? If...

Short conversation

Mandy, a teenager, had been talking on the phone for almost half an hour and then she hung up. “Wow!” replied her father, “That was short. You usually talk for two hours or more. What happened?'” “Oh,” smiled Mandy, “It was...