I'm Shirley Finlayter and I'm the Director of Studies at Cactus Language. It's my job to maintain and develop language teaching and training standards across all of the areas of Cactus. This extends from our language holidays, to our tailor-made corporate courses, and from our UK foreign language evening courses to our TEFL training department.

On the left is a selection of short articles on some of the themes we get asked about.

We're keen for you to get the most out of your language course abroad, whatever your aims or your level of language. Please get in touch with us with your questions or concerns about language learning.

In the articles listed on the left here, I first consider some of the benefits of a taking a language course abroad. Then we look at whether you feel you're going abroad for a language course or a language holiday.

We're often asked how long you have to go away for to really get something out of a language holiday. Whilst we agree that a week abroad is better than nothing, it's also true that there are advantages in taking a longer language course abroad.

Finally, there are some links to our information on course formats and our interpretation of language levels.

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