Ollie Phillips Inspires Stowe Students

Students at Prestigious Stowe School Learn to Love Languages

As England rugby 7’s captain, player of the year, Clipper round the world yachtsman, Guinness World Record holder, and now Director of Digital Innovation at PricewaterhouseCoopers Ollie Phillips has a colourful and varied career that is impressive by most standards.

Speaking on behalf of Cactus Language, and organised by Stowe’s Language Society, Ollie engaged a large group of Stowe School sixth former students with his tales of adventure, whilst linking back the opportunities he has been given to his ability to speak French. Having spent 3 years in France playing rugby for Stade Francais Ollie began learning French with Cactus Language and through hard work and dedication became fluent in a relatively short period of time. Ollie himself attributes much of his career success to being able to communicate and express himself with key influencers in different areas, in French. Ollie spoke about the experiences that came his way as a direct result of being able to speak French well, and how a chain of events, started by his French speaking skills, eventually led him to becoming the Head of Digital Innovation at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he continues to use his French language skills and excel in the corporate world.

Detailing the next stages of his language learning journey – to improve his Spanish, Ollie indicated that the language learning journey is one that continues through the years, and that it is a journey he is enthusiastic to keep pursuing.

The students at Stowe were both interested and inspired by Ollie’s experiences and had plenty of questions for Ollie after his presentation. ‘What did you do to learn the language?’ ‘What’s the best way to learn a language?’ ‘Why do you want to learn Spanish?’ were just some of the questions pitched from the audience of around 60 sixth formers, many of whom will be going on to sit their language A levels this year.

If you would like to learn more about Cactus Language courses including immersion study abroad programmes from one week, or would Ollie to give an inspirational talk about language learning at your school please email us or call 01273 830 960.

Cactus language offers the following types of language courses:

Evening language courses: 19 different languages in 15 UK locations
Language holidays: worldwide immersion courses in the country of the language
Junior programmes: junior language programmes for English, French, German, Italian and Spanish
Private tuition: tailor-made and corporate language training solutions throughout the world
TEFL: teacher training courses for both English and other languages all over the world
Online courses: for teacher training, English and French