5 ways to Prepare Your English for Work

Using English in your daily life can be fun, but the idea of using it in the workplace can be scary. The term “Business English” sounds just as scary, but it’s really just a different set of language skills.

The one main difference between daily conversational English and daily business English is the type of active skills used, which can be summarized as speaking (presentations and meetings) and writing (email and reports). But the first skill is getting the right job through an interview!

The 5 Soft Skills for Work

Before you even enter your new place of work, you need to pass the interview. This can be a stressful experience. You need to use English for something very, very important, so it’s understandable to be nervous. Employees don’t only look for good English skills, but they also look for the right answers. You can follow these three tactics to help you prepare the right answers.

1. Speaking: Interviews
   Before you even enter your new place of work, you need to pass the interview. This can be a stressful experience. You need to use English for something very, very important, so it’s understandable to be nervous. Employees don’t only look for good English skills, but they also look for the right answers. You can follow these three tactics to help you prepare the right answers.


• Focus on the company. When you answer the interview questions, always mention how the company can benefit for your experience. They don’t usually care about what you want from the company, but they only want to understand how they will benefit from hiring you.
• Make negatives sound positive. There are two questions that encourage the interviewee to think negatively: weaknesses and failures. Instead of saying “difficult”, say “challenging”. Instead of “slow” and “picky”, say “methodical” and “meticulous”, respectively, for example.
• Be brief. One major annoyance of interviewers is long-winded answers, where the interviewee keeps talking and talking. These answers lack organization, logic, and mindfulness. When you speak slowly and compose your thoughts, you uphold the ideals of a good employee: organizational, logical, and mindful.


2. Speaking: Presentations
   You’re standing in front of an audience. All eyes are on you. You begin to sweat. You know what you want to say, but your nervousness is bordering on terror. This type of public speaking affects everyone, including native English speakers presenting in English. It’s call “stage fright”, but when using the three tactics below, you’ll more comfortable delivering an important presentation at work.


• Use bullet-points. For your PowerPoint presentation, it’s very difficult for the audience to read a paragraph and listen at the same time. Bullet-points help to condense the main points. This applies to your notecards, as well. Don’t write a script because it will sound robotic. Bullet-points are reminders to yourself.
• Get to the point. Each slide in your presentation should be part of a story. There’s the background, the events, the effects, and the call to action. Using transitional words can help the audience understand your story. Use sequence (first, last), cause (because), result (therefore), and contrast (however).
• Look above their heads. While all their eyes are on you, you can turn your eyes away from their glares in order to reduce your nervousness. Making eye-contact with the audience can make you stutter or lose track, so look just above their heads. To them, it will seem like you’re looking at everyone.


3. Speaking: Meetings
   Many people think meetings are boring because it’s a time when you sit, listen, and feel sleepy. These types of meetings are actually poorly organized. A well-organized meeting is dynamic, which means everyone has a chance to participate in order to create something together. When following the three tactics below, you feel ready to jump in and get the ideas flowing.


• Be respectful. A key part of a meeting is to share opinions in order to reach an agreement and solution. One part of this process is disagreement, which is natural in every meeting. Begin your disagreement with softening expressions such as “I feel that…” or “I understand your perspective, however…”
• Soften your questions. Direct questions can sound rude, such as “What do you think?” Instead, soften your question by saying, “Would you mind telling me what you think?” Instead of asking “Why is that?”, say “Would it be possible for you to say why that is?”
• Rephrase your ideas. When giving your opinion, it’s common to start speaking without fulling developing your idea. However, once you begin to speak, your brain begins to work out the details. When you’ve finished speaking, say something like “In other words…” then continue rephrasing your idea.


4. Writing: Emails
   Writing in English can feel more comfortable than speaking because you have more time to think about your choice or words, grammar, and tone. Even then, when sending important emails to your boss or to another company, you want the email to sound polite or formal. You’ll be able to use this beautiful, formal English in emails by following the three tactics below.


• Follow a structure. Line messages usually don’t follow a structure due to the informal format. However, email is a more formal channel of communication and should include a salutation (Dear…), an introduction, a body, expectations, contact information, and a valediction (Sincerely…).
• Keep a list. After you learn some useful formal expressions, keep a list of the ones that are easy for you to use. You could classify them by formality (informal to very formal) or simply save them in an email template. Most workplace emails can be written following a template.
• Understand relationships. More often than not, emails using polite English will be enough for daily communication, both in the office and with other companies. It’s rare to use very formal English, which is usually used when communicating with university presidents, government figures, or CEO’s.


5. Writing: Reports
   Emails are usually just a few paragraphs long, but a report can be one, two, or even twenty pages long. The amount of detail can be intimidating, but like an email, reports also follow a structure. And like essay-writing, each paragraph and sentence has a purpose in the report. When following the three tactics below, your reports should be easier to read and write.


• Keep it short and sweet. You don’t need to write long, elegant sentences. Short sentences are fine as along as the sentences aren’t too short. Try to have a variety of sentence lengths: some with fewer than ten words and others with more than ten words. This variety makes the report easier to read.
• Use tables and graphs. Looking at information in tables and graphs is much easier than reading text. The more visual the information is, the easier it is to understand. Table and graphs should be the evidence or conclusion of what you write in the paragraph. Include them when they’re useful.
• Use bullet-points. Similar to PowerPoint presentations, it’s useful to make lists in a report using bullet-points because they are easier to read. It’s important to ensure that each bullet-point has parallel structure, when means that each bullet-point has a similar format of language.

Just as your English doesn’t have to be perfect when speaking in daily life, your language isn’t expected to be perfect at work either. A good TOEIC score may give the confidence to apply for a job that requires English, but really, confidence comes from practice and patience. The more you practice these soft skills at work, the better you will become.

Lastly, remember that you’re not alone. Your workplace is full of people who have faced similar language difficulties. Ask them for advice on doing interviews, giving presentations, participating in meetings, writing emails, and writing reports. In addition to your colleagues, numerous materials have been published to help employees like you to improve your English and succeed in the professional workplace.