Business English Guide

Search for a business English guide and you tend to find either a dictionary of corporate jargon nobody actually says, or generic advice — "be clear, be polite" — that evaporates the moment you are in a real meeting. This page is different. It is a free, structured guide built from the lessons our teachers use with working professionals in live classes every week: the exact emails, phrases and situations that come up in real jobs, explained so you can use them the same day.

How to use it. Each article below is a complete, self-contained lesson on one workplace situation. You can jump straight to whatever is most urgent — an interview on Friday, a presentation next month — but if you are building your business English deliberately, follow the order on the page. Start with everyday communication: the phrases, emails, phone calls and small talk that make up ninety per cent of working life, because sounding natural in the ordinary moments is what builds your reputation. Then move to the high-stakes rooms — meetings, presentations and negotiations — where preparation and set phrases do far more work than raw fluency. If you are job-hunting, the hiring section walks the whole path from CV to video interview. Finally, the last section covers longer-form writing and specialist fields. Treat each article as one focused study session: read it, say the phrases out loud, and try at least one of them in a real email or call before you move on. One situation mastered per week beats fourteen skimmed in an afternoon.

Who it is for. This guide is written for professionals from roughly B1 to C1 — people whose English is already functional but who want it to be an asset rather than a source of stress: the developer who goes quiet in sprint reviews, the manager who rewrites every email four times, the job-seeker whose experience is stronger than their interview answers. Everything is in plain British English, and every lesson is built around sentences you can lift directly into your own working day. You do not need business studies vocabulary to follow any of it.

One honest note. A guide can hand you the phrases and the structures, but confidence in a meeting is a speaking skill, and speaking skills are built by speaking — with feedback, under a bit of friendly pressure. That is exactly what our live Workplace English course is for, and this guide pairs naturally with it. Use these lessons as your map and your reference; if you are not sure where your English actually stands today, our free level test takes five minutes and gives you a CEFR level to start from.