Accent must be on clarity.

Byline: Alan Plews

Teesside is great - but our ability to communicate needs improving.

This is the view of Brazilian Ludmila Ghil who has spent this year in the communications department of Stockton-based blast furnace engineers VAI UK.

Ludmila, who came to the UK last summer for work experience, said: "I have encountered different dialects in London, Cambridge, Brighton, Cromer, Dorset, Liverpool and from the Irish people I have met but the one which has been the most difficult to understand has been here on Teesside.

"People speak so quickly!"

But she added: "Everybody has been supportive and helpful and I find the English people generally very polite.

"I have been so happy here."

Ludmila's English journey began through a chance remark from her father Angelo, an engineer at CST in Vitoria, Brazil, to Steve Barnes, a VAI UK engineer working on a furnace there.

It seemed that no sooner had Angelo mentioned that Ludmila, 21, had completed three of her four years of a communications degree course than she was in the UK, improving her English and learning about our different cultures by mixing and working with people.

"This trip has been a real challenge and it is an experience that will change my life forever," said Ludmila, who has been staying with the family of VAI UK engineer Mike Eden since coming to Teesside in January.

She is due to leave for home on March 31 to begin her final year at university.