Il corso di Business English è ideato per manager e professionisti interessati a migliorare le competenze di inglese in ambito aziendale e commerciale. I corsi di inglese sono tenuti da docenti madrelingua.
Business English is no longer optional, nowadays it is a must-have skill for professionals in any workplace area. English language skills can be required to carry out a wide variety of tasks, from writing a simple email to a formal presentation, from a friendly meeting with international colleagues to a client negotiation.
This course aims to provide the technical vocabulary, the tools, and above all the practice to take your Business English to the next level. Leave your Italian at the door for this English virtual classroom!
Learning objectives
- Improving your Business English skills
- Gaining confidence in business communications, both written and spoken
- Reviewing grammar and common vocabulary
- Mastering technical vocabulary, concepts, phrases, and conversations
Intended audience
All professionals with a pre-intermediate or intermediate English level, who are willing to improve their Business English skills.
Contents
Introducing Yourself and Your Company
- Talking about yourself and your job
- Describing work processes
- How to effectively present your company
- Describing products and services
- The Elevator Pitch approach
- Meeting people for the first time: welcoming visitors/clients/customers/colleagues
- Common vocabulary & expressions
Small Talk & Networking
- Small talk introduction: Is it necessary or appropriate? Cultural fit and biases
- Starting a conversation: breaking the ice and getting acquainted
- Appropriate and inappropriate topics: cultural dos & don’ts
- Active listening techniques and effective questioning
- Describing actions & activities
- Moving from small talk to business
Business Emails and Messaging
- Business email format and email etiquette guidelines
- Standard email phrases
- Formal, semi-formal and informal expressions
- Common text abbreviations: dos & don’ts
- Practical advice for business text messaging
- Editing and proofreading: tips & tools
Phone Calls
- Answering and handling calls
- Shall I put you through? Best practices for screening calls
- Clarifying and asking for information
- Could you spell that for me?
- Taking and leaving messages
- Business telephone etiquette: formality & expressions
- Summarizing a telephone message
- Cold calling vs. warm calling tips
Meetings
- Looking at different types of meetings (e.g., team, board, formal, informal)
- Welcoming participants
- Opening, controlling, and conducting a meeting
- Summarizing the Agenda
- Summarizing decisions and recapping a meeting
- Giving feedback
- Tips for attending networking events
- Exchanging contact details
Presentations
- Structuring a presentation: introduction/opening, main part, conclusion
- Mind-mapping a presentation
- Organizing a speech: timing, handouts, questions
- Public speaking rules: how to make a speech interesting and effective
- Signposting: words and phrases to guide the audience through a presentation
- How to describe graphs, charts, diagrams, tables, and statistical trends
- Handling a Q&A session
- Best practices for writing effective presentations and reports
Negotiations
- Introduction: Life is a negotiation. The negotiation mindset for workplace success: negotiating with clients, customers, suppliers, partners, bosses, internal team etc.
- Proposals and counterproposals
- Expressing probability or improbability
- Expressing conditions and possible results
- Negotiation strategies and tactics
- Proposing solutions
- Engage with questions
- Tips for writing a sales or business proposal
Grammar Recap
- Present perfect tenses vs. past simple ones
- Conditional tense
- Future tenses
- Asking questions: direct and indirect questions
- Adverbs of frequency
Vocabulary Recap
- High frequency phrases and words
- Common vocabulary: times, dates, currency etc.
- Common economics vocabulary
- Technical vocabulary: Business Administration, Retail, Marketing & Sales; making an order or a claim; making assignments, issuing orders and instructions
- Free time and leisure activities vocabulary: e.g., travelling & socialising
Practical exercises
- Vocabulary exercises
- English grammar exercises
- Multiple-choice test
- English pronunciation
- Group discussion & role-playing
