My Business English courses enhance the participants’ performance in speaking and writing in English in professional contexts. The tailored programmes typically consist of six half-day sessions scheduled every one or two weeks. Depending on the specific needs of the participants and the organisation, companies can choose between a ‘kick-start’ refresher course or a more advanced course aimed at finetuning higher level skills. Some companies offer up to three different course levels for their staff.

A careful intake for a fully tailored programme

Prior to the course, participants complete a baseline measurement exercise and submit two or three recent work emails for review. Based on their input, I create a programme that is tailored to their needs and learning objectives.

Review of grammar and practice with real-life situations

With a quiz each session, various relevant grammatical topics and stylistic conventions pass the review. The focus lies specifically on pitfalls for non-native speakers (and if applicable: especially for Dutch speakers). Asa homework, participants are given reading assignments in the reference work they receive at the start of the course. They also prepare their answers to the quiz as homework between sessions.

Both during and between the sessions, participants have plenty of opportunities to put their newly refreshed knowledge into practice. They prepare role-plays to practise speaking in situations that they find challenging in calls and meetings. They receive feedback on new emails that they send in for review between sessions. Especially in the advanced groups, participants also read and discuss texts relating to their field of work. Not only does this provide them with relevant new vocabulary and ways of formulating things, but reading them aloud also offers opportunities to finetune their pronunciation.

Retraining your speech muscles to lose your accent

Each session includes a ‘Pronunciation Clinic’ where participants learn exactly where and how English speaker produce certain sounds (consonants and vowels). We also give attention to ‘silent letters’ and where native speakers normally place the stress in longer words. In this way participants become aware of how much their habits and assumptions based on their native language interfere in their pronunciation of English. The important difference here is not that between British and American English, but rather the difference between standard English and one’s native language. Participants often experience this as the funnest part of the course.

Communicating effectively in English between cultures

The differences in how information is ‘packaged’ in English emails compared to Dutch emails is standard fare in every course. But in some cases, participants regularly need to correspond with and speak to people from very different cultures using English. In such cases, my Business English courses can include attention for best practices in effective intercultural communication. We look at how best to apply the theory to concrete cases that participants bring. They often experience this as a real eye-opener.