Why fully effective Business English courses Go Beyond Grammar

A strong knowledge of English can make things easier as you move around and meet new people.

But what if you’re a business professional who has reached fluency with basic English and now wants to take it a step further? What if you understand the rules of English grammar but would love to increase your skills and focus on Business English to improve your career and get ahead at work?

A Business English course can do this for you. At the English Language Centre we go beyond grammar and extend your genuine ability to apply Business English skills to your work, whether you’re expanding into English-speaking territory, dealing with a foreign owner or board, or preparing for a job role which requires a more natural usage of English.

What is Business English?

Business English is a variation of the English language that focuses on your professional communication skills, your knowledge of key words and phrases, and your overall ability to work comfortably and competently in a particular career, industry or sector of the job market, in English.

English for Business is very different from General English. With General English, it’s all about your ability to use English at varying levels of fluency, to communicate on everyday subjects. It’s the English of free time, holidays, shopping, evenings at home, conversations with friends.

Business English is a thing whether you’re an international student of English or a native English language speaker. You’ll hear English people in England talk about dropping into ‘work mode’ or ‘putting their game face on’. These expressions confirm the idea that we shift our language register (the way we talk based on the people we’re speaking to and the context we’re in) when we go to work. Our language tends to be more casual, intimate and colloquial at home and with friends and family, and more formal, precise, analytical and professional-sounding at work. This is the starting point of what we mean by Business English.

When you consider research on Workplace English as a Lingua Franca, you’ll see how nuanced it can get. Rather than us thinking of Business English as just one thing, what we really want to help you develop when you attend a Business English course at ELC is your ability to constantly adapt your English based on your audience and the situation - your ‘Business English register’, if you like.

Helping you adapt your Business English at any moment

When you’re in the earlier stages of learning business English you’ll be happy enough if you manage to remember the word “balance sheet” or “sales forecast” or “customer journey”. At more advanced levels of Business English, we’ll be developing (and challenging!) your ability to be much more fluid with how you use your business English. You know already that you talk differently to your colleagues in the coffee break, your line manager at an appraisal, your board members or the media at a press conference. We are looking to make sure you can do this just as well in English. That’s going to take some time perhaps, so when we first meet and we conduct our needs analysis with you, we’ll want to learn from you what specific situations you find yourself in at work, and where you think you need the most help to communicate effectively.

Communication and professionalism at work

You might need to work on your tone, using the right terminology, and being very succinct with your language - time is money! Your business English course with us could therefore be focussed on reducing hesitation, helping you expand very specific sets of vocabulary and boosting your fluency so you project confidence and capability. Being clear when speaking to an international team or the leadership level above you makes you easier to work with, minimises misunderstandings and helps everything run more smoothly.

Contextual, social and cultural capability in English

We just mentioned how the context and situation at work will need a slightly different usage of Business English - your monthly business update presentation will use different language than the informal lunchtime business meeting with people you work with every day. But each company, each industry and different regions will all have their cultural and social idiosyncrasies. So when Indian call centre outsourcing companies wanted to show they were culturally close to English speaking customers in England, they trained them by requiring them to watch English TV shows. If you’re dealing with a company in the south of England, the chances are the type of conversations, small talk, professional conduct will be very different to what you would find in the North of England. Getting that right can mean the difference between a polite but fragile relationship, and a friendly, high-trust, deeply profitable one.

The rise of Global English

The opposite to this very localised contextualisation of Business English is the use of Business English as the Lingua Franca. Here, everyone should make the same amount of effort to use words and phrases which will be internationally understood. You’re looking for language with the least amount of ambiguity. Words and phrases which translate well. If you have a high level of English, you might feel like you’re ‘dumbing down’, using words that are very simple. But in fact, this can be harder than it sounds to do. Once you’ve learned beautiful business phrases to impress the board, you might find it a challenge to go back to basic Business English. In many ways, being extremely fluent in Business English might feel like learning the language again (and again!).

On a Business English course at ELC, this is the kind of thing we can look at - always with the aim of improving not only your fluency, but also your flexibility to apply your business English skills in a way that is appropriate to the situation.

Who needs a Business English course?

The question is: do you need a business English course to be more effective at work, or can you do it yourself? The benefit of an intensive course in one of our centres is that we’re going to focus on the specific work situations where you want to build your skills. It might take a long time of getting it wrong before you finally get your business communication in English right. We speed up the process, so you get a quick fix before applying it in your work context back home.

When you learn Business English at ELC Brighton, you will be taught by our experienced, specialist staff and cover a wide variety of topics designed to take your career to the next level. We’ll always cover things like presentation skills, negotiation techniques and report writing, along with communication skills, small talk tips, holding meetings, business vocabulary and useful phrases, the art (and importance!) of socialising with colleagues, and email correspondence. By discovering more about your business context, your motivations and your objectives, we’ll adapt our teaching to help you succeed at work.

How can you improve Business communication skills in English

Practice makes perfect, so you don’t have to wait until your course to improve your business communication in English.

Here are some fun business English challenges for you to try:

• Watch videos that target your profession or industry in English. Simply repeat the phrases as you hear them, and then try and memorise and present back the whole video as if you were doing it for the recording. Pay attention to tone!
• Switch your phone’s operating language to English. This can really drive you crazy at first, but you’d be surprised how much things to do with mobile communications and apps are discussed at work. You can do the same with your version of Microsoft Office or Google Workplace too.
• Use online English exercises, especially those that focus on Business English. Train up ChatGPT to be your business English teacher. It won’t replace the real thing and the rich experience you’ll get from being immersed in Business English with us, but it will certainly keep you busy and motivated.
• Get feedback from your friends and colleagues - and use that feedback to practise, practise, and practise some more!
• Use grammar resources to polish your basic English - this will give you even more confidence to expand into Business English when talking, writing emails or preparing presentations
• Sign up to an English-speaking newspaper app, like the Times, Financial Times, Guardian or New York Times.
• Listen to English language podcasts and webinars, particularly those packed with Business/industry content on your way into work. Just 15 minutes a day of business chat will do wonders for your comprehension.
• Listen as much as you speak - effective communication is not just about talking; it’s also about listening. It helps you build stronger relationships with colleagues, clients, and customers
• Take a business English course!

A Business English course in Brighton ELC - one of the top English language providers in the UK - will equip you with the keys to a successful and satisfying professional career anywhere in the world.