English for the Workplace

About this course

A course in the English people are judged on at work, pitched between CEFR B1 and B2 and built around the situations that come up constantly rather than around grammar. It opens with email, because most workplace English is written and most of that is email. Structure, greetings and closings, the ladder of formality for a request, how to give bad news, and how to chase without annoying anyone. Plus the two mistakes that stand out most: dated business phrasing, and writing a date in a format that means two different things depending on which country reads it. The second lesson is the one learners find most useful and least expected: professional English, and British English in particular, is indirect. It says less than it means. A learner who reads it literally misses instructions, and one who speaks directly seems rude without intending to. There is a table of what people say and what they mean, and it works in both directions. Then meetings, which are hard in a second language because the moment passes while you build the sentence, so the lesson gives short openers that claim the floor and buy you time. Then describing your work: the tense rules for a current job against a previous one, verbs that make real work sound like real work, and how to answer the awkward interview questions. It closes with the vocabulary of applications, pay, structure and projects, and the good news that the English of work is more formulaic than general English, so it is a smaller thing to learn. Read the first lesson before anything else. It says exactly what the certificate means, and what it does not.

What you will learn

• Write a professional email that gets read and answered, at the right level of formality
• Understand indirect English at work, and use it yourself when disagreeing
• Take part in a meeting, including interrupting, checking, and buying time
• Describe your job and your achievements with the right tense and real evidence
• Answer the standard interview questions in the structure interviewers expect
• Use the vocabulary of applications, pay, organisational structure and projects

Before you begin

• Roughly B1, meaning you can hold a conversation and read general English
• Everything is text, so no microphone, headphones, or audio needed
• No prior qualification, and no external test booking required