Don't Just Learn Business English

So you have to connect with them culturally and socially. Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here again, and today I want to talk about workplace English. Uh, if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe, click on the bell for notifications. And if you're following me on a podcast service, please leave a review. So many people I know listen to my, uh, videos, uh, or even as a podcast to improve their English. English is, whether we like it or not, sort of the most widely used international language. So there is a need to learn English for work. This is particularly true of immigrants to say Canada, the US, UK, Australia, English-speaking countries who have a need to work in the sort of mainstream economy, therefore to use English or in the case of Canada, French in the province of Quebec.

So... and, and there are many, if we Google, we look for, you know, professional English business, English workplace English, there are special programs courses that are offered uh, to help people improve their English for work. But I have some general sort of thoughts on this. My only view is that to work in English, the sort of technical jargon, the technical vocabulary that you need is rather limited, uh, that can be learned quite easily.

And, uh, what I would do if I were say, having to work in German, let's say, or a Spanish or Chinese or Russian or Japanese or Portuguese, then I would find, you know, documents, uh, reports, um, things of that nature, which have the vocabulary, the technical vocabulary that relates to my area of professional, uh, you know, expertise or things that I need, and I would read them and I would, if I could find podcasts on these subjects, I would listen to them.

I would save the words and phrases that I need essentially using something like LingQ. I would bring them into LingQ and then work them to get that, uh, jargon, that turn of phrase, the technical terms that I need. That's the easy part. The more difficult part is, because if you work in a, an office or you're interacting with customers or suppliers, or you're dealing with people in a working environment, you are dealing with them socially.

You're dealing with them socially while at work, you're dealing with them in many situations socially after work. So you have to connect with them culturally and socially, that's more difficult. So I always say, you know, the professional English, the business English, that's the easy part. Work on improving your social English.

And fortunately today there's an abundance of sitcoms on YouTube on Netflix. Uh, there's different ways we can access these to get at the, the phrasing that is being used. Uh, you know, if we can get ourselves to a stage where we actually get the jokes, um, you know, even the fact that we watch some of the popular TV programs or see the most recent movies gives us a subject of discussion that we can share with our colleagues at work. Um, but also we can acquire the vocabulary and get a sense of, of the culture to the extent that these sitcoms reflect how people actually live. It's a somewhat distorted impression. Nevertheless, I find when I watch a sitcom and in...you know, Turkish or whatever. I have a feeling that I'm participating in, in the life of these people, Turkish people, if it's a family or whatever. And I tend to prefer sitcoms with what seems to be realistic people rather than, you know, crime and car, car races, and shooting and all this kind of stuff. So, so we have to work even in the workplace, we have to work on our social English as well as our, um, professional English. Now, when it comes to sales presentations or making a presentation of any kind, I think it's, first of all, you want to study people who are effective at doing this. And the interesting thing for those people learning English is that there is an abundance of podcasts on... not only on every possible area of, from marketing to technical issues to, uh, you name it Bitcoin, I don't know. There's, there's podcasts on everything. Uh, and there's podcasts on history and there's podcasts on whatever subject you're interested in. So I would definitely recommend availing yourself of podcasts.

But also, uh, I'm sure, I don't know if there are podcasts on how to make a presentation, but there's a lots of, I haven't Googled for it, but if you Google for how to make a presentation, you get lots of tips. My suggestion is in any presentation I have made, I use the sort of presentation techniques of the ancient Greeks and Romans the sort of rhetorical conventions.

And you can Google rhetoric and you will see that they have a certain style. You begin by... you have to begin by making people like you in a way and establishing your credentials. And then you tell a story and then you can present some counter-arguments to your story. And then you want to finish with an emotional appeal.

I mean, I've summarized it very quickly, but I would definitely recommend that you do some research into how to present things effectively. And there are a number of conflicting theories of how to present effectively, but these are techniques that you should have because if you have a technique that you're using for how you are going to present, how you're going to make yourself appear credible, how you're going to lead the audience one way and then lead them another way and then conclude in some other way then you have the feeling that you are in control. And that is a very powerful feeling when you are trying to persuade people of something. So to summarize then, uh, by all means, uh, and, and once we're talking about workplace English, in most cases, we're talking about people who are beyond that sort of beginner level.

These are people who have a certain level in the language who need to improve that level, but beyond that want to feel comfortable in the workplace. So my advice in summary is by all means find technical documents, articles, material, books, podcasts that you can access in order to get the technical jargon and phrasiology that you need. Or for that matter, if you have, if you have to write papers, there are forms that... or structures that should be used in making, you know, presenting your dissertation or whatever it might be, but then make sure you put enough effort into the social cultural language so that you can be comfortable with your colleagues at work, whether at work or after work.

And there are any number of ways you can do that because nowadays there's just so much material available on the internet. Even if you don't live in say an English-speaking country, you can access that kind of environment through Netflix, YouTube, and other, you know, maybe presentations that are available on, on the internet.

And finally, if you are in the situation where you have to make sales presentations doing a little bit of research on effective, you know, speechmaking and, and rhetoric, as I say, R H E T O R I C, because the ancient Greeks enrollment has really had a good approach. It was a big part of, of their education.

And, uh, I think it's very valuable even today. So there you have it, uh, a brief discussion on workplace English and, uh, it is part of this whole idea of effective output. So I will leave a couple of videos where I talk about using the language effectively.