Article Surfing Archive

Are you learning English for Business? Congratulations. Improving your language skills can be a great way to move into a better job or even get the job you've been dreaming of for a long time. But, have you asked yourself this very important question? Exactly what business are you studying for? This is a question many English language learners never really ask!

You see the language we use changes depending on the situation. The type of business, the work environment, and many other factors will influence the language used in one business from another. Of course some of the language and communication purpose stays the same, but a lot is different. This isn't really too hard to understand, but lets look at a simple example to really clarify what I'm talking about here.

Imagine two people who work for different companies in different industries. One works for http://yahoo.com as a programmer in the internet industry, and another works as a check-in attendant for British Airways in the airline transportation industry. Both require business English, but quite clearly the language the programmer uses to talk with "The Boss" will be very different from the language the check-in attendant uses.

You won't hear the programmer asking a client "Do you want an aisle or window seat?" very often. Nor will you find an airline attendant telling his or her supervisor that the latest sub-routine has a bug in it that is causing client's computers to crash. This just makes simple sense. The work you do, the place you work, and the people you work with will all affect the language that you use on a daily basis.

So, when you are studying English for business purposes, you need to remember a very important thing. You need to study the general business English that will be common in most business situations, but you also need to focus on the language that is specific to the business world that you will be working in.

Doing both of these is critical to your success. If you can't use the language of your industry because you don't really know it, you will have a very hard time getting (or keeping) a job.