Business English Skills
With the business community and employers increasingly focusing on staff skillsets, getting on top of business English skills has never been more pressing. Professionals advancing their careers internationally must become proficient in English communication, oral and written. Credibility soars and work processes become easy if you have a strong command of the English language.
This post introduces must-acquire skills and provides a roadmap to doing so. The skills transgress all industries though work-specific vocabulary must feature in your learning too.
When you think of the four pillars of language learning, i.e. speaking, writing, listening, and reading, you realise that you need competencies in each to excel professionally in English. You must hone in on each area and go beyond basic general English.
Depending on your profession, you need to focus on one of the areas. Handling oral communication and refining your speaking and listening skills is crucial to career advancement, whatever your position.
The best business English courses prepare you for settings and tasks relevant to all industries, including meetings, negotiations, sales, customer care, networking, and more. The ability to prepare presentations and deliver them with confidence, alongside the much-dreaded art of small talk, also needs conquering.
To make mastering business English skills more manageable, let’s list them and explore how best to proceed.
Expanding Your Vocabulary
Expanding your vocabulary, refining your tone, and coming to grips with industry terms and phrases is a prerequisite. While you likely absorb new language through work tasks, you cannot excel without investing time and effort in memorising them.
Widen Your Vocabulary
Professional English communication boasts refined and concise language. Don’t try to complicate your phrases. Instead, focus on learning phrases and words commonplace in business meetings and negotiations.
Vocabulary related to your profession and industry constantly flows across your desk and screen, ready for you to shape into a glossary. Use a notebook to record and memorise them, revising them whenever you get a chance.
Reading
Reading emails, reports, contracts, business analyses and more requires time, practice and a deep pool of industry-specific vocabulary.
Elevate Your Reading
Read whatever comes your way, especially content relating to your work. Use a dictionary or the internet to translate new terminology, while developing an ear for business English.
Listening
Perhaps the most challenging business English task, developing comprehension and getting to a point where speaking with a native is easy is no mean feat.
Sharpen Your Listening
Speaking speeds and accents cause headaches for non-native speakers. The only way to sharpen your listening skills is by communicating with native speakers in as many ways as possible.
To train your ear for English, watch YouTube videos with subtitles, to begin with, before progressing to podcasts and radio shows.
Develop a daily listening habit, meaning spend at least 10 minutes listening to business English content every day.
Writing
With AI help at your fingertips, refining your writing may not be your top priority. Nonetheless, you ought to expand your writing skills and explore register and tone while mastering central grammar points.
Polish Your Writing
The best way to polish your business English writing is by paying close attention to any materials you receive, especially emails. Soak up the language, turn of phrase, tone, and vocabulary and try to mimic them. And, rather than tasking AI with your writing, pen a draft and let AI edit and improve it.
Speaking
Speaking pigeon English is easy but if you want to impress at work, you must work on your pronunciation, speaking patterns, intonation, tone, and word choice.
Cultivate Your Speaking
Speaking is the one English skill that doesn’t allow you to use resources or hide behind AI. Happily, you likely already possess all the speaking prowess you need, and the only thing between you and fluency is practice. Whenever the opportunity arises, speak English, whatever the topic or setting.
The more you speak the more confident you become until you are ready for the most complex discussions. You can take a conversation lesson or join a conversation group. Alternatively, chat with English-speaking colleagues as often as you can.
Being Professional Yet Personable
Outstanding business English skills play a crucial role in international career development but only if you also display cultural sensitivity, good manners, clarity, and warmth.
Having empathy and being an active listener earn respect and build fruitful business relationships
Business English Skills
Excellent business English skills blend outstanding communication, cultural sensitivity, and essential soft skills. Those who master them will ease through all professional processes and complete tasks with style.