English is one of the first investments to be made in advancing your professional career. New opportunities at work, meetings, Zoom, emails... In the business world, your English skills are constantly being challenged.
A good command of the English language is therefore essential for your confidence at work. While achieving a good level of professional English can be seen as time-consuming, there are some tips that will help you reach your goal faster.
The golden rules for improving your professional English:
1 . Identify your objective
It is important before you start learning English to focus on your goal.
Is there an urgent need for you to be able to speak? For presentations in English or meetings.
Or perhaps you feel the need to master professional English in writing? You feel lost when you have to write an e-mail, make a report in English, etc.
Or perhaps you simply need toacquire this skill to be able to work with non-French speaking staff or to access new opportunities.
Whatever the reason, it is important to identify your objectives to avoid possible disappointment, as they are not all achieved at the same speed.
2 . Knowing your learner profile
Knowing yourself better means avoiding mistakes and therefore saving time!
Indeed, each person learns in a different way, whether it is auditory, visual, kinaesthetic... and not knowing which one is the best way of learning can lead to many unnecessary errors and waste a lot of time.
Namely that:
- Memory auditory is remembering something through listening rather than through the other senses.
- Memory visual is when we learn more easily from what we see.
- Memory kinesthetic,which is rarer, is the fact of learning with the other senses, i.e. touch (or gestures, action) but also smell and taste
3. Soak up professional English
If you can't travel, the best way to progress is to soak up the language listening to podcasts, reading the news or watching videos in English on YouTube.
When you do any of these tasks, concentrate and take your time, don't try to do things in quantity, but in quality.
For example, select a short passage that you do not understand, write it down and look up the definition of 4-5 words that you do not know and read/listen to it again. Then, feel free to imagine everyday scenarios in which you put these new words into practice.
Some examples of podcasts with good English:
- Learn English du British Council ( for beginners ),
- Voice of America : Learning English for those who prefer an American accent
- 6 Minute English de la BBC for intermediate to advanced levels. All these podcasts cover a variety of topics such as health, wellness, international economics, current affairs, technology etc.
Some examples of newspapers:
The main sources of business information are
- The Economist, Reuters,
- The News York Times…
- The Harvard business review is a diverse and qualitative source of information.
4. Take an English course to get you started!
No matter how hard you try, learning English should be a lived experience to become a reality. This is how the brain works: to speak English, the only solution is to speak. You can store up to 10,000 pieces of information, your brain will not know how to use them all at the time unless you put them into practice.
Training courses at Business Speaking for example, are all focused on unlocking business spoken English. Telephone courses, directly focused on the industry in which you work, are an excellent way to naturally immerse yourself in the language.
If you want to master English professionally at all costs, don't be discouraged, and let's get to work! 🙂
