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See pricingProfessional development, through Dutch
Jacky van der Starre teaches professionals to speak the Dutch they already understand. Not as a language course, but as professional development: Dutch is the tool through which you contribute in the meeting, say what you think, and work as the professional you already are.
That sentence is deliberate. Most people who come to her do not have a Dutch problem in the way they think they do. They read Dutch emails without much trouble. They follow the whole meeting. The words are in there. They just do not come out in the two seconds before a kind colleague switches to English to help them out, and after enough of those moments you start to believe you are worse at Dutch than you are.
Knowing Dutch and speaking Dutch are two different things. Closing the distance between them is the whole of Jacky's work.
Who comes to her
Some cannot get through the door: the Dutch requirement in the job advert is the thing standing between them and work they are qualified for. Some are already inside and cannot move up, because the meeting is in Dutch and they are the one nodding. Some run their own business and need to win Dutch clients in a language they are not yet convincing in. Some had a team that became Dutch speaking overnight, through a reorganisation or a new manager, and never chose any of this.
And some are here for longer than a contract. There are children in a Dutch school, a house, a life. Speaking the language of the country you live in stops being a career decision at some point and becomes something closer to belonging.
All of them share one thing: their Dutch is standing between them and something they want.
What professional Dutch means
Professional Dutch is the Dutch you need to be yourself at your own level. If you can build a layered argument in English and in Dutch you are stuck at the basics, you have not lost a skill. You have lost a piece of yourself in the room.
Getting that back is not a matter of more words. It is a matter of speaking, badly, often, somewhere it does not cost you anything, until it stops being a performance.
How Jacky works
Jacky has been an entrepreneur since 2009 and has been doing this particular work since 2022. Before that she trained people in other fields, and in an earlier company she worked with expat spouses. That is where she found the thing her whole approach now rests on: what people need is not more language, it is language they can actually use, in the situation they are standing in.
She knows the workplace from the inside, not from a textbook: team meetings, client calls, performance reviews and the awkward silence at the coffee machine on a Friday. She works online, with professionals in the Netherlands and beyond. More than 150 professionals have been through her intensive one on one trajectories, and quite a few of them said so on camera.
She is warm, direct and practical, and very Dutch about it. She will tell you honestly if what you need is not what she sells.
Where the work lives
Spreekwafel is the free app: ten minutes a day, out loud, on your own time. It is where most people start, and it costs nothing.
Spreekwafel Circle is the community where you speak with other professionals every week, at your own level, with a monthly masterclass. Circle Pro adds a weekly live lesson and the Expert Vault.
Inner Circle is one on one with Jacky, by invitation and in small numbers. It always starts with a conversation.
TaalStar is the training company Jacky founded, for tailored one on one and duo Dutch training. StageUP and Connect are live speaking events in the Eindhoven area.
Elsewhere
If you are not sure which of the four fits, the free app is always the honest first step.