Business English

Business communication requires a wide variety of language skills. In this video, you’ll learn 5 business communication tips to help you succeed in the English-speaking workplace:

1. Consider audience, purpose, and method.

2. Use polite language.

3. Be clear and concise.

4. Show appreciation.

5. Be friendly not formal.

If you follow these five tips, you’ll be a better communicator in the workplace.

Review the key details from the Business Communication Tips video lesson and practice your skills by following along with the practice exercises and quiz questions.

Polite communication is a crucial skill for workplace success. In this video, you will learn 5 polite words you should use more often at work:

• You're welcome

• Could

• Would

• May

• I'm sorry

Learn the language and strategies for these 5 words so you can use them at work. This will improve your ability to communicate politely.

Successful professional communication requires you to use polite language and avoid rude language. In this video, you’ll see 5 rude phrases you should avoid at work:

• Do you understand?

• Like I told you

• It’s easy

• Yeah yeah

• You should have

You’ll learn why these phrases are rude and better language you can use to communicate politely.

You want to communicate as politely as possible in the workplace. However, sometimes we communicate in ways that are rude, even if we don’t realize it.

In this video, you will see four rude communication behaviours to avoid in the workplace. For each behaviour, you’ll learn strategies for better communication in those situations.

Giving instructions is a common workplace communications task, and you want to do it effectively and politely. In this video, you will learn strategies and language to give instructions at work. Here are some of the skills to learn from the video:

• Starting your instructions with a positive statement

• The one phrase to avoid before giving someone instructions

• The language for clear steps in your instructions

• Language to ask for questions

• The one phrase you don't want to close with

The video will give you the language and strategies to give instructions at work. This will help you develop your communication skills and lead to professional success.

Practice your ability to give instructions at work. This lesson reviews the skills in the previous video and gives you questions and practice activities to build your skills. Improve your ability to give instructions with this video!

Making requests is a common part of workplace communication. You use requests when you need something, like when you ask for help, ask for information, or ask a person to do something. This video shows you three ways to make requests at work:

1. Polite requests

2. Direct requests

3. Soft requests

Learn the strategies and language you need to give requests at work. This will help you develop your professional communication skills.

Practice your ability to make requests at work. This lesson reviews the skills in the previous video and gives you questions and practice activities to build your skills. Improve your ability to make requests with this video!

Giving and receiving opinions is a common practice at work. You often need to share opinions and agree or disagree with coworkers.

In this video, you’ll learn language and communication strategies for talking about opinions at work. You’ll see how to introduce your opinion and how to ask for other people’s opinions. You’ll also see how to agree and disagree with others in a professional, polite way.

Practice your understanding of the Opinions lesson. Follow along with the video for activities and questions to check your understanding.

Giving advice at work is a common task. You need to pay attention to when to give soft, strong, polite, or direct advice. In this video, you will learn the language and strategies for giving advice in a variety of situation at work. This includes:

1. Giving soft advice with "how about"

2. Showing what you would do with "If I were you"

3. Giving strong advice with "should"

4. Giving formal recommendations with "I suggest" or "I recommend"

The video will help you choose the best language for all the situation you need to give advice at work.

Learn to give and receive invitations with co-workers and clients.

• Giving Invitations
• Accepting Invitations
• Declining Invitations

Talking about large numbers is a part of business communication. This video shows you how to say large numbers correctly in English so you can have the confidence to use numbers in the workplace. Learn key strategies to say any number in English correctly:

• The 3-digit method of saying any-sized number

• The "hundred and" phrase you can use to say large numbers correctly every time

• The trick to build fluency saying large numbers

The video also gives you chances to practice large numbers to check your understanding and skills.

Practice your ability to say large numbers in English with this practice video. Follow along with the practice activities to check your understanding of large numbers.

Learn the top 10 tips for small talk at work! Small talk is any conversation that doesn't have a purpose. It's chatting about the weather, your weekend, sports, food, and more. It's a crucial skill for business communication, as you use it with coworkers and people you meet for the first time at events or conferences. In this video, you will learn the strategies and language skills to have small talk conversations at work. These are some of the skills you will develop:

1. Be prepared.

2. Approach one person instead of a group.

3. Give more than an introduction.

4. Choose good topics for conversation.

5. Be interested not interesting.

6. Use people’s names.

7. Ask questions.

8. Make it easy for people to continue a story.

9. Pay attention to body language.

10. Know when to end a conversation.

This video explains how to use each tip to improve your ability at having conversations. Use these skills to build your communication abilities.

Practice your understanding of the small talk tutorial video by reviewing practice activities and exercises. Do you have the skills to be a great conversationalist at work? Find out in this video!

Learn to manage conflict in the workplace with language and strategies.

Learn to talk about improvements in the workplace.

Practice your ability to talk about improvements at work.

This communication skills video shows you how to talk about safety at work, including prohibition and obligation. Whether you work in the factory of office, it's important to be able to communicate about safety in English. Here are some of the skills you will learn in this video:

* Talk about obligation using "must" and "have to"

* Talk about prohibition using "must not" and "can't"

* Consider the difference between "don't have to and must not"

When you can talk about obligation and prohibition, you are able to communicate about safety rules and policies in the workplace. Build your English communication skills with the strategies in this video.

It’s common to talk about your personal and professional preferences at work. This could be tasks, projects, locations, or jobs you like or dislike.

In this video, you will learn to talk about your preferences at work using English verbs called gerunds and infinitives. You will look at common phrases to discuss preferences and consider the correct grammar needed to use these phrases.

Successful professional communication requires you to know English grammar rules and apply them correctly.

This video introduces you to five common grammar challenges for professionals so you can see the areas you need to practice and improve. Here are the five grammar topics in the video:

• Articles are “the”, “a”, and “an”. You'll learn how to choose the correct one.

• Conditionals help you discuss hypothetical situations, something that’s quite common in the workplace.

• Prepositions are the tiny words that show time and place.

• Verb tenses help you talk about the past, present, and future.

• Gerunds and infinitives help you avoid grammar errors.

This video will help you improve your grammar and give you a clear focus for areas to improve in the future.

Learn to write more quickly and reduce errors by using the writing process. This video shows you how to plan, write, and edit your business writing. You will focus on the three steps of the writing process:

1. Consider strategies to plan your emails to save time later.

2. Learn the #1 secret to writing more quickly.

3. See how to proofread and revise your writing to avoid errors.

With the strategies in this video, you can improve your business writing, including emails. By planning and editing, you will write more quickly with fewer errors.

Do you wonder how formal to write at work? Choosing the correct language and tone in your business writing is a challenge!

In this video, you will learn the formal writing rules you need to follow and the rules you can ignore. This will help you choose the correct formality in your business writing. The video also shows you how to focus on being friendly in your communication rather than worrying about formal rules.

Check your understanding of the Formal Business Writing lesson with this practice lesson video. Follow along with practice activities and a 10-question quiz. Check your ability to use formal and informal business language.

In this video, you can see a sample email that has language that is too formal. Watch your instructor remove jargon, cliches, and complicated language.

Email is the most common form of business communication, and it has its own set of rules and etiquette.

This video will show you 10 email etiquette tips you can use at work:

1. Don’t send too many emails.

2. Manage urgency.

3. Be confidential.

4. Leave out your emotions.

5. Avoid humour.

6. Don’t be too formal.

7. Don’t be too casual.

8. Use visual techniques.

9. Include links.

10. Handle attachments correctly.

If you follow these tips, you will improve your email writing.

Learn the top 10 reasons to NOT send an email!

Email isn't always the best form of business communication. In this video, you will see these 10 reasons to not send an email:

1. The information you need is searchable.

2. Your email is long

3. You are avoiding a conversation.

4. Your message is time sensitive.

5. You are emotional.

6. You are debating or discussing.

7. You are talking about something negative.

8. You haven’t completed the request.

9. The message is not appropriate for email.

10. Speaking would be faster.

Build your professional etiquette and communication skills by reflecting on how you use email.

Check your understanding of the 10 Reasons to Not Send an Email lesson with this practice lesson. Do you know the times you shouldn't send an email? Find out with the questions and activities in this video. Follow along to practice your skills!

Learn the language and strategies you need before you start writing your emails. Improve your communication with your co-workers and customers with this lesson.

The email greeting is the first line of your email, so you want it to be perfect! This video will show you the common email greetings and how to use them. You will also learn when to use each greeting depending on the situation. Here is what you will do in this video:

• Learn the best and most common English email greeting

• Learn the formal email greetings and consider situations to use them

• Think about times to use the no greeting option

• Consider common email situations and the greetings you should use

Build your business writing skills in English with the email strategies in this video.

Practice your understanding of the Email Greetings lesson with this practice video. Follow along with activities and quiz questions to check your abilities.

The email opening is the first line you write after the greeting. It is crucial because it's your first impression on the reader. In this video, you will learn to focus on the purpose of your email in the opening. Here are some of the skills you will learn in this video:

• How to get to the purpose in the first line of the email

• Phrases you can add at the opening to build your relationships with coworkers

• Phrases you should always avoid in the opening and the reasons why

With strategies in this video, your email openings will improve, helping you continue your development as a business writer.

Learn the language and strategies to finish your emails.

Download this 80-page Effective Email Writing textbook. The book has many of the lessons in this section for review and practice.