Business English
Business English lessons cover the English a particular job requires: written communication, meetings, calls, and industry vocabulary. Lessons use material from the learner’s own work rather than a general course book, and run one-to-one or as a small group inside a company.
Who this is for
- Professionals who work in English but were never taught the register their role needs
- Teams in a Hungarian company that has moved to English as a working language
- People moving into a role with more client contact or more writing
- Anyone whose English is good in conversation and awkward in writing, or the reverse
If none of these describes you exactly, write anyway. The list is a guide, not a filter.
What we cover
The starting point is your own material. Bring a thread of emails, a report you had to write, a recording of a meeting you found hard, and we work on those. Generic business English course books teach a version of office life that nobody works in.
- Written communication: email, reports, proposals, and the difference in tone between them
- Meetings: interrupting politely, disagreeing without causing offence, and summarising a decision
- Calls: telephone and video, including the harder case where you cannot see the other person
- Industry vocabulary and the phrases your own field uses as shorthand
- Register: the gap between correct English and English that lands the way you intended
Groups inside a company
Group sessions work well when the participants share a level and a job function, because then the material is relevant to everyone in the room. Mixed-level groups need more careful planning and usually a smaller size.
Sessions are arranged around the working hours of the team, including early or late slots. For a group, I usually suggest an initial assessment for each participant, so the planning starts from real levels rather than an average.
Why register matters more than vocabulary
The most common problem among competent English speakers at work is not grammar. It is tone. Hungarian and English carry politeness in different places, and a direct translation of a perfectly normal Hungarian sentence can read as blunt or as evasive in English without the writer noticing.
A large part of these lessons is spent on that gap: how a request sounds, how much hedging a situation calls for, and when English expects you to be more direct rather than less.
Who teaches it
Before teaching, I worked in business. I ran administration and finance for a business travel agency, handling contracts, invoices, budgets and correspondence with clients and suppliers, and later wrote English web content as part of an international software team. The documents and situations business students bring are ones I have dealt with for real.
In Hungary I taught business English to corporate groups and one-to-one clients at E.ON, Strabag, Ganz Electric, Apcom, Konecta and Caffé Service, across energy, construction, electrical engineering, IT distribution, customer service and coffee distribution - Caffé Service is Lavazza’s official distributor in Hungary. Since moving to London I have continued one-to-one and with company groups. I am CELTA-qualified and completing the Cambridge Delta.
Common questions
What is a business English course?
A business English course teaches the English one job actually requires, rather than general English with a business vocabulary list attached. In practice that means your own emails, your own meetings, and the vocabulary of your own industry, not a course book set in a fictional company.
Do you run corporate English training for teams?
Yes, for small groups inside a company, scheduled around your working hours. In Hungary I taught corporate groups and one-to-one clients at E.ON, Strabag, Ganz Electric, Apcom, Konecta and Caffé Service. Group sessions are quoted separately from one-to-one lessons, because the price depends on the number of people and how often you meet.
Can lessons happen at our office?
In-person sessions are possible in London. Outside London, sessions run online, which also suits teams split across sites.
What group size works best?
Between three and six participants. Below three it is effectively one-to-one teaching at a group price. Above six, individual speaking time drops to the point where the session stops being useful for the quieter participants.
Can you work on one specific thing, such as presentations?
Yes. If the need is a single event rather than ongoing capability, look at negotiation and presentation coaching, which is built for exactly that.
Do you sign an NDA before seeing our material?
Yes, if your company requires one. Working from real documents is what makes these lessons useful, so whatever paperwork makes that possible is worth doing at the start.
How do we measure progress?
We agree at the start what "better" means for your role, usually a specific task such as writing a client update without a second draft. Progress gets checked against that, not against a general level test.
How much do lessons cost?
Prices depend on the lesson length, whether the lessons are one-to-one or in a group, and whether they run in person or online. Send me a message describing what you need and I will quote a rate.
Talk about your team or your role
Tell me what your work asks of you in English and where it currently goes wrong. For a group, tell me roughly how many people and their levels.