Foreign Language Courses for Business

Courses are designed with themes that cover key aspects of conducting business with international partners, with a particular focus on online business communication.

Courses focus on professional communication and are based on the four competences recommended by the CEFRL (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) - speaking, listening, writing and reading - and are adapted to key business settings.

Students will therefore learn applied vocabulary and will be guided towards mastering the foreign language in various business situations. An emphasis is also put on culture and intercultural differences that can be key to conducting business successfully.

Please note that some of the following themes can be studied in more detail or replaced by other relevant themes.

Week 1 - Introductions and general etiquette

Greetings, introductions, what to do and how to behave online and in-person in a foreign language (requests, suggestions, apologies).

Week 2 – Yourself, your role, your company

Describing your company, talking about yourself and your role description, talking about your trade, understanding descriptions of other businesses in a foreign language.

Week 3 – Daily office tasks

Business routine, making an appointment, arranging a meeting, coffee/lunch break, daily tasks in a foreign language.

Week 4 - Meetings

Organising a meeting, making a business call, chairing an online meeting, meetings step-by-step in a foreign language.

Week 5 - Office writing

Emails, letters and reports in a foreign language.

Week 6 - Recruitment

Job offers and interviews: job adverts, applications, résumés, interviews in a foreign language.

Week 7 - Talking money

Numbers, budgeting and accounting, presenting and discussing a budget, dealing with banks and insurances in a foreign language.

Week 8 - Business trip

Going on a business trip, making reservations, arriving and leaving, asking for help, business situations abroad, frustrating situations abroad.

Week 9 - Formal presentations

Preparing and giving a presentation, understanding presentations in a foreign language.

Week 10 - Understanding specialist texts

Current affairs in your trade, reading, understanding and summarising specialist texts in a foreign language.

We cater for all levels. From groups of complete beginners with no previous language experience, employees with some language background who need to brush up on their skills, or advanced speakers who wish to develop their language practice for particular contexts and purposes.

This course is available to organisations looking to book a minimum of eight people.

You can be confident with the quality and professionalism of our courses. Our language tutors are native or near-native speakers and expert teachers who have between eight and twenty years experience teaching languages in the private and education sectors.

Our programmes are designed and monitored by a Senior Lecturer in Modern Foreign Languages who is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has over 16 years experience teaching and developing language courses in the UK and abroad.

We use innovative and effective teaching methods: as university educators we are not only experienced in teaching languages at the highest level, but also employ creative teaching methodologies.

We believe that learning is a highly individualised process and we adapt to businesses needs and to each learner’s background.

We use macrosimulations, role plays, practical cases and debates as main teaching methods to reproduce authentic situations, thus enabling the learners to reuse and transfer their knowledge back to their work context easily.

Courses are typically 10 weeks long with a 2-hour intensive weekly workshop taught by an experienced university language tutor.

Formats can also be adapted to suit your bespoke needs. For example, full-day workshops, language boot camps, etc.

For more information and to discuss your needs, please contact us:

T: +44 (0)116 207 8455
E: businessservices@dmu.ac.uk